Ptyxis Ecology - Our Botany Blog

Chickweed willowherb in south Northumberland

2011-07-17T02:06:00.000-07:00

Chickweed willowherb Epilobium alsinifolium is one of our montane willowherbs that is scattered in the North pennines, the Lake District, The Cheviots, the southern Scittish uplands and North Wales, as well of course as the Scottish Highlands. See the distribution map from the BSBI website at http://www.bsbimaps.org.uk/atlas/map_page.php?spid=690.0&sppname=Epilobium alsinifolium&commname=Chickweed Willowherb

Our county recorder John Richards (who is also an expert on alpine plants), took this photo recently at the only site for this plant in south Northumberland.
John says that out of 500 plants present in the flush this was the only one that was flowering! So it would be easy to overlook it if you were not an expert. The previous county recorder George Swam found the plant at this site in 1969 and last recorded it there in 1991. John was revisiting the site to check out the population as part of a series of surveys he and others are doing to check on populations of Northumberland's most rare and special plants.

You can see an account of all of the county's rare plants at http://botanicalkeys.co.uk/northumbria/rpr.asp

John

Its all gone yellow!

2011-07-17T01:21:00.000-07:00

Many traditional arable weeds have declined hugely or dissappeared completely due to changes in agricultural methods in the last 60 years. Corn marigold still survives here and there, but is much, much less common than it was.

It is very rare now to see so many corn marigolds in an arable field like in this picure from Bamburgh. There is an interesting story behind this. Steve Pullan sent me these pictures and explained what happened. Steve and I used to work together at RDS setting up agri-environment schemes and Steve still does this work for Natural England. These fields have been in arable for a long time, but for the last 4 years they have been managed organically, which has allowed some corn marigolds to germinate from the seedbank and grow in the crop. You can see quite a few corn marigolds in the foreground, but there is a continuous sea of deep yellow in the background.

This field has some interesting archaeology below the ground and so the field is in the process of being converted from arable to grassland to protect the archaeology. A grass and clover mix has been sown and the cultivation method encouraged the corn marigolds to germinate. There must have been many thousands of corn marigold seeds in the soil for years waiting for their opportunity. Of course, as the field will be a grassland in future, the corn marigolds are likely to dissappear in a few years once the sward closes up. But there will be lots of seeds produced this year that will lie in the soil waiting for the soil to be disturbed again.

In the latest edition of Stace's flora from last year, several common plants have been given new scientific names. We now have to call corn marigold Glebionis segetum which sounds very odd when you are used to the old name Chrysanthemum segetum. I guess we will have to get used to it, but you see the plant so rarely nowadays that there is lots of time to forget the new name before you see it again.

John

A long week’s botanising in South Northumberland

2011-07-09T02:05:00.000-07:00

It is always a great pleasure to visit Northumberland. Compared to the suburbs of Brussels, it is quiet, friendly and interesting. After a year since my last proper recording trip any small glimpse of wild places is a pleasant experience and Northumberland always has a few botanical surprises in store for me. So, I thought I’d share my finds in the hope that someone finds them interesting.

I started off my trip around Blyth and Ashington. It is not the most obvious location for botany, but random squares settle where they will. Still, this small area contains the only salt marshes and some of the best lowland ponds in the vice county. horned pondweed (Zannichellia palustris) was my favourite find in this area. It is not common, though it may be more common than records suggest. It lurks, cryptically, under water often in the shade of bigger, more obvious water plants.

Moving on, I passed by Heighley Gate Garden Centre. I was not there to buy plants, but to see if they had been infected. New Zealand bitter-cress (Cardamine corymbosa) has been rapidly spreading across Europe like a disease of pot plants. It didn’t take long to find it there. By the way, this bittercress should not be confused with either wavy bitter-cress (Cardamine flexuosa) or hairy bitter-cress (Cardamine hirsuta), which also inhabit plant pots at garden centres. Another treat of Heighley Gate, was seeing their Mistletoe; to my knowledge, this is the only Mistletoe in Northumberland. Though it is obviously introduced, it is interesting that it flourishes so well, even though it fails to naturalise.

Further north I had a long visit to Holystone where I recorded about 220 species in one monad! This small area contains all sorts of little habitats, including river bank, bog, moor, meadow and woodland. Probably the best find was one plant of hairy rock-cress (Arabis hirsuta) on the shingles of the Coquet. It has been recorded in that area previously and I hope that this one plant might be an outlier from a larger population upstream.

The habitat of Arabis hirsuta on the Coquet gravels

On the Sunday, John O’Reilly, Phil Brown and I went to look at Hummell Knowe and cover the neighbouring monads. Phil managed to collect and then get refereed Trichophorum x foersteri; T. cespitosum and T. germanicum all from Hummell Knowe. Even though the neighbouring Burndivot monad looked rather boring, we still managed to find 141 species in it.

During the visit I interspersed trips to wild places with “boring” agricultural monads. One of the big surprises from these “boring” places was great brome (Anisantha diandra). I found it for the first time last year, near Newcastle Station. I had assumed it was a casual there. Still, this year I found it at five new sites, four of them inside random monads. It has obviously increased in the county, but it has perhaps also been mistaken for barren brome (Anisantha sterilis). You may find it in the borders of wheat and barley fields where both Anisantha species can be found growing together.

The rarest record was refinding needle spike-rush (Eleocharis acicularis) at Catcleugh reservoir. I found one patch of less than 1m2. To my knowledge it was last seen there in 1972. I think the low water helped to make it more visible.

The view of one monad, Lumsdon Law from another, Hungry Law. near Catcleugh

In the last couple of days I revisted the Bee Orchids at the Royal Keys. The old sewage works is perhaps the best brown-field site in Northumberland. It hasn’t been surveyed thoroughly but contains at least 200 species including musk thistle, yellow-sedge, delicate stonewort and even common cottongrass, which is practically extinct in the south-east of the county.

Last, but not least, I found a small patch of grass vetchling (Lathyrus nissolia) in a monad near Amble. It is an elegant plant, which is practically invisible amongst grass, were it not for it flowers. It has been moving northward in the country, perhaps as a contaminant of grass seed.

Well, it isn’t easy fitting a year’s worth of recording into a long week but I did my best. I will now look forward to next year and ponder over what I might find then.

Quentin Groom

Schedule 9 invasive plant identifcation course

2010-11-28T09:36:00.000-08:00

And now there are 40!

Until April 2010, there were only 2 non-native invasive plant species that ecologists doing site surveys for developers really had to worry about finding - Japanese knotweed and giant hogweed. But now 38 species have been added to schedule 9 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, for which it is a criminal offence to cause to grow in the wild.

Many are rare and easy enough to recognise, but a few are widespread and tricky plants to identify. I have been persuaded to run an id- course on the whole lot, in one day. This is ambitious! But I think it is needed. Ecologists are the professionals that clients will rely on to survey for these plants - and unless you want to bring in an experienced botanist on every Phase 1 survey, you need to at least know what to look out for.

See www.ptyxis.com for details (on a downloadable flyer on our front page news section) ; or email me clare@ptyxis.com

Grass Identification Course makeover!

2010-11-28T08:57:00.000-08:00

Get Going with Grasses!

I have taught grass identification and ecology for 8 years now, and each year I keep on discovering better ways to help ecologists learn about the green stuff!

The main problem is botanical keys : none are aimed at beginners or non-specialists, plus keying out can be tedious and time-consuming. But then recognsing species by jizz and learning by rote on a guided walk-and-talk doesn't really do the job either - you need a tool to enable you to identify unknown grasses on your own.

So for 2011 I have written an innovative, comprehensive vegetative key to British native grasses and all the widespread non-natives that you are likely to come across. This key is unlike anything else out there, as it bridges the gap between the academic floras and picture books. I plan to publish it eventually, but until then you can get a copy and learn how to use it on one of my grass courses.

Why vegetative grasses? Well, this is by far the easiest place to start grass identification, as the parts of the plant are easy to see; grass flowers are made up of tiny scales that you cannot really see, count or measure without magnification - and measuring their bits is really too fiddly in the field!

Botanists rarely use keys to identify grasses during site surveys - mostly we use a combination of both vegetative characters and features of the flower, keying out as it were, in our heads. You can learn to do this too!!

Course details are on my website www.ptyxis.com/training.html or email me clare@ptyxis.com

Clare

Looking for a plant identification, botany or habitat survey training course?

2010-10-31T06:46:00.000-07:00

We are running a programme of plant identification courses aimed at professional ecologists and interested volunteers again in 2011. See www.ptyxis.com/training.html or email us on enquiries@ptyxis.com for a Booking Form & prices. Our courses are the same price as most ecology CPD, at between £60 and £80 a day (no VAT).

Our courses include:
•Phase 1 Habitat Survey
•Grasses, Sedges & Rushes for Phase 1 Habitat Survey
•Identifying Invasive Plants on the New Schedule 9 List
•Using the Wild Flower Key: Botany for beginners & the top 10 plant families
•Identifying Grass Indicator Species in Flower
•Advanced Grasses
•Plant Indicator Species for Phase 1 Habitat Survey
•Introduction to Aquatic Plants
•Sphagnum Identification & Ecology
•Introduction to Bryophytes as Indicator Species

There are still few organisations offering this type of botanical CPD training in the UK. Many are unaccrediated courses, which means that the quality of the teaching is not independently monitored. This is probably OK if the tutors involved have their work regularly checked anyway as they teach for universities or colleges or other awarding bodies with QA processes, but many courses never mention who is actually doing the teaching - and if they do, few state that their teaching is independently assessed. Being a professional ecologist does not mean that you know how to teach professionally! Professional teachers have to do CPD, just like ecologists, so they should be striving to improve their courses and, for example, have evidence to show that they can cater for mixed abilities in their groups.

It is also important to realise that attending an identification course is a great start, but that you need to practice regularly (by which I mean at least once a week, every week over the summer season) to retain and develop the skill....so as with any field of expertise, it helps if you really love the subject (and being outdoors)!

Clare

Hybrid thistle

2010-10-31T02:23:00.000-07:00

A local botanist, Phill Brown, found this strange looking thistle about 2 or 3 miles from where we live
You can see that it is quite a robust plant, with large, fairly flat leaves that are deeply lobed.

The inflorescence is similar to melancholy thistle Cirsium heterophyllum, but perhaps a bit narrower than normal. The top of the stem has no spines and only weak ridges or wings, which also almost fits with Cirsium heterophyllum. It would have no ridges on the stem at all. This is a character not found in most other British thistles.

The word 'heterophyllum' means variable leaves and Cirsium heterophyllum can have both unlobed leaves or lobed leaves like these. The dense cottony underside to the leaves is also a Cirsium heterophyllum characteristic.

However, the undulate (wavy) margin to the leaf with strong spines, does not fit with Cirsium heterophyllum and this photo shows a leaf resembling those from marsh thistle Cirsium palustre, but broader and more robust.

You can also see the undulate spiny margin on this more-or-less entire leaf from the same plant.

Additional characters that fit with Cirsium palustre more than Cirsium heterophyllum include: height (Cirsium heterophyllum is normally shorter); well-spaced leaves along the stem; long branches; and shoots all from a single rosette (Cirsium heterophyllum normally has lots of vegetative growth about the base). In addition, the plant was pretty infertile with only 8 normal-looking seeds from 3 flower heads.

Initially it was the overall 'odd' appearance of the plant, plus the combination of Cirsium heterophyllum type lower leaves and the degree and nature of the branching, that caught Phill's attention and caused him to suspect that he had found the (unfortunately named) hybrid between the two, Cirsium x wankelii. The combination of aditional characters from both Cirsium heterophyllum and Cirsium palustre listed above, helped Quentin Groom to confirm the identification. This is only the third record for this hybrid in England!

That process of identifying a hybrid by assessing all of its characters and comparing them to possible parent plants, is typical of how hybrids have to be identified. Hybrid identification probably qualifies as a 'dark art'. Part of the trouble is that you can rarely fit hybrids neatly in to keys to species, as they are too variable. This variability is often due to back-crossing (i.e. hybrid plants crossing again with one of the parent species. This means you can get hybrid plants that are very close morphologically to either parent and other hybrid plants at stages in between the two extremes. That is just too much variability to accomodate in a dichotomous key usually. Where there is not so much back-crossing, it is usually less of a problem and genuinely intermediate plants are more common. An exception to this involves Roses which have an unusual way of inheriting genes from their parents (split 20-80, instead of the normal 50-50).

Even without back-crossing, first generation hybrids are not necessarily intermediate in every character between the two parents. There are several reasons for this, e.g. some characters are associated with dominant and recessive genes, so the morphology in the hybrid plant will resemble the parent plant with the dominant gene entirely.

As they can be so tricky to identify, it is often useful to collect some more information about the plant. What other species from the genus are growing nearby? If both potential parents are growing right next to the hybrid that is reassuring, but not absolutely necessary or conversely, not absolute proof in itself.

Most hybrids are at least partially sterile and so at least some will not form viable seeds. Sterile seeds often look shrivelled and empty compared to viable ones. However sterility in hybrids can vary between 100% and 0%. For this character to be useful, you really need to have some knowledge and experience of what the normal range of sterility is for the particular hybrid that you are dealing with. This information is not included in popular books, so you need to have access to specialist texts, or to someone with a particular expertise in the group of plants you are dealing with.

Hybrids often have some sterility in their pollen. This can be checked easily under the microscope by putting some pollen in stain. The viable pollen is usually coloured and full, whereas the sterile pollen appears shrivelled and colourless. You simple count how many of each type you have and from that work out the percentage fertility. Again for the results to be meaningful, you need to have some experience with the particular hybrids.

On top of all of that, of course, sterility can be caused by environmental factors, so just because you have some sterility, does not mean necessarily that it is a hybrid!

This all sounds complicated, but it is really a simplified account of some of the factors you consider with hybrids. It is no wonder that most people interested in plants groan in despair at the mere mention of the word hybrid.

John

H21a

2010-10-25T06:58:00.000-07:00

This year I have been busy doing a big upland National Vegetetion Classification (NVC) survey on a site near where I live, covering about 3,000ha. Its been really hard work doing such a large survey by myself, but at last, I've nearly finished it!

My favourite habitat on the site is labelled as 'H21a' in the NVC. This is a habitat that is easy to recognise - heather and/or other dwarf shrubs, with Sphagnum beneath and no hare's-tail cottongrass. Around here, it usually occurs on steep (c. 45 degrees) north-facing slopes.

This is a very nice example of the habitat on a very steep (>50 degrees) slope. As the site is right on the north edge of the Pennines, there are lots of steep north-facing slopes. But you find it throughout the North Pennines, particularly in narrow strips along the north side of east to west stream valleys.

Here is a close-up showing some red Sphagnum in amongst the dwarf shrubs. You can get 4 red Sphagnum species from Section Acutifolia in this habitat - capillifolium, russowii, subnitens and quinquefarium. This is more or less the only habitat that S. quinquefarium grows in around here.

I suspect that this habitat is often overlooked in the Pennines for several reasons: it often occurs in strips of habitat that are too narrow to map; it occurs on steep slopes that are more difficult to walk along than the more gentle slopes on the top, which are usually covered by blanket bog; it looks superficially similar to blanket bog, just lacking any hare's-tail cottongrass; and all habitats with prominent bryophytes are overlooked and misunderstood, as most surveyors can't identify any bryophytes.

The shots aove show a very open sward of dwarf shrubs, but more usually there is a thick sward of dense heather with patches of Sphagnum here and there. Sometimes (on grazed sites) you get a lower sward with bare patches. It is always worth looking closely at these areas as here you often find locally or regionally uncommon liverworts. Recently, I have found Barbilophozia atlantica, Kurzia trichoclados and Lophozia incisa in patches of this habitat.

In the north and west of Scotland, whole hillsides can be covered with this habitat and the best spots have H21b, which is a version of the habitat that is much richer in liverworts. Not only are liverworts abundant in H21b, but there are usually rare oceanic species included. This is what bryologists refer to as the 'Northern hepatic mat'. Along with atlantic temperate rain forest, H21b is probably one of the most special habitats in Britain as there is more of it here than anywhere else in the world. In the North Pennines. although we get some interesting liverworts in H21a, it would be stretching it too far to refer to this as a 'hepatic mat', as there are usually only small patches of liverworts in our examples.

John

New things to look out for in the autumn

2010-10-25T06:33:00.000-07:00

Quentin Groom sends the following pictures and text about Conyzas:

Conyza canadensis (Canadian Fleabane) first established in the North-east in the 1990s and is now well established in Newcastle, Gateshead and Hexham.

Close-up of C. canadensis infloresence.

Its taller, hairy cousin C. sumatrensis (Guernsey Fleabane) has become established around the station in Newcastle over the past two years.

Both look similar, but C. sumatrensis is distinguished by having much hairier flower heads and a distinctly cone-shaped inflorescence. C. canadensis has hairless or slightly hairy flower heads and a columnar inflorescence. The shape of the inflorescence is a difficult character to grasp, until you have seen it in the field. However, once you’ve got used to it, it allows you to spot each species at a distance.

Both species are urbanophytes and they grow in pavement cracks, walls, gutters and other microhabitats of the urban landscape. They are expected to increase!

Quentin

PS. I first started botanising seriously when I lived in London in the late 1990's. By that time C. sumatrensis had become probably the most common plant in Central London even though it had not been recorded at all when Rodney Burton's 'Flora of the London Area' was published in 1983.

John

Epiphytes on the move

2010-03-26T02:21:00.000-07:00

I always like to find Frullania species when I'm out bryologising. Both Frullania dilatata and Frullania tamarisci are fairly common species. I just like the colour.

Frullania tamarsci near Blakeman's Law

In North-east England, most bryophyte epiphytes become more common the further west you go. Areas with high rainfall, especially sheltered, humid gorges are generally the best places. Many species are also sensitive to certain types of air pollution and as a result large areas of eastern England have lost most of their epiphytes. Nowadays the air is no longer polluted from as much coal-burning as it was in the past. It has taken a few decades for epiphytes to recolonise formerly heavily polluted areas, but in the last 10 years or so several species have begun to recolonise eastern areas at a dramatic rate.

In the south-east of England and East Anglia, this phenomenon has been fairly well studied and documented, as there are quite a few active bryologists down there. Up here, we have more bryophytes but bryologists are very thin on the ground and recent recording has been so patchy that we just don't know yet which species are recolonising and how fast. It seems like some of the species showing the greatest recent increases in the south are not so prominent here, at least yet. On the other hand we probably have other species that are recolonising our area, that are still rare in the south.

Ulota phyllantha at Brown Hill

About 10 days ago I found lots of Ulota phyllantha on willows and rowans in a sheltered valley within Kielder Forest south of Stonehaugh. This is quite uncommon in Northumberland, but I found it on lots of trees in various places within about a mile of where I took the picture. I've no idea if it has been there a long time or if it has recently recolonised. Andy McLay recently found it in Co Durham - the first record there for over 100 years. I told him I wouldn't be surprised if he found some more and a couple of days later he found some at another site.

Orthotrichum pulchellum at Brown Hill

Orthotrichum pulchellum is one of the species in the south that has shown a big recent increase. I've been puzzled why we haven't found more of it up here. There was a big population of it on about 5 or 6 trees in the same valley south of Stonehaugh. For an Orthotrichum it is quite distinctive: it is the only one whose leaves curl up when they are dry; it has a very neat overall appearance; it is always quite small; the base of the calyptra usually has dark dots all round it; and the peristome theeth are orange.

Hopefully it will start turning up now in some other new sites.

John

More Teesdale surveys

2009-08-12T15:12:00.000-07:00

We finally got a relatively dry week up here so the farmers in Upper teesdale have all been busy 'hay timing'. Although sadly for the hay meadows (but not for the farmers) they mostly make haylage rather than hay nowadays, as you can see from the bales wrapped in plastic.

The hill in the background of this shot has one of the biggest juniper woods in the country.

Here are some plants from today from a remarkably species-rich habitat along Sand Sike. The habitat was unusual (at least to me) so I did a quadrat (recorded all of the species in a 2m x 2m square). I got 58 species including several rare arctic alpine species! In NVC terminology the habitat is CG10c, which is rare in Britain and mainly occurs in the Breadalbanes in Perthshire. It must be extremely rare in England.

Tofieldia pusilla (Scottish asphodel) is a very attractive little plant but very easy to miss as you can see from the size of it's fully-grown leaves here.

Here's a big clump of it with 3 plants in flower which makes spotting it a bit easier, but not much!

We've had Blysmus compressus (flat sedge) before (see entry for 3 July 2008). There were thousands of plants along the sike today.

There were also lots of plants of Parnassia palustris (grass-of-Parnassus) which has just started coming into flower in the last week or so.

John

What happened to the summer?

2009-08-08T01:14:00.000-07:00

It has been nearly 4 months since our last blog. First we had computer problems back in April and all of our blog pictures dissappeared. It took ages to put them back on again and there were some we couldn't re-find. So I was a bit fed up with the blog for a while, but we're friends again now. Since then I have been flat out working. I went freelance at the end of April and for much of the summer I have been surveying 10 farms in upper Teesdale, doing condition assessments of their SSSI 'interest features' and completing 'Farm Environment Plans' to guide new 10 year management agreements under the 'Higher Level Stewardship' scheme.

This has been a very interesting area to study in such detail. Upper Teesdale is well known for it's colourful flowery habitats. The riverbanks along the Tees and the Harwood Beck are particularly colourful and herb-rich.

But of course Teesdale is also particularly famous for its rare plants and rare habitats. Bird's-eye primrose is an easy one to spot when it is in flower. This is a highly localised plant in Britain, being more or less confined to Cumbria, Durham and Yorkshire. It is quite abundant in some places in upper Teesdale.

Much rarer in England is false sedge Kobresia simpiciuscula, which otherwise is confined to parts of the Scottish highlands in Britain. Both of these plants occur in species-rich calcareous flushes (M10) in upper Teesdale, often with other rarities like Scottish asphodel, variegated horsetail and alpine rush and with other nice plants or 'axiophytes' like grass-of-Parnassus, tawny sedge, marsh arrowgrass, common butterwort and lesser clubmoss.

However many of these typical 'calcareous flush' plants grow in other types of species-rich vegetation in Upper Teesdale including U5c, CG10b, CG10c, M26b and various types of vegetation transitional between M10 and something else, including especially M23a. In many parts of the Upper Teesdale SSSI different habitats with these species have been incorrectly identified in the past by English Nature staff who tended to always label the habitat as M10 whenever they encountered these species. This has made my job of assessing changes in the habitat difficult as in many cases I find the species, but a habitat other than a calcareous flush at the point marked on the map. It is often difficult to work out if the habitat has genuinely changed since it was last assessed or if the habitat was mis-identified before.

John

The colours of spring - mosses and flowers

2009-04-18T12:13:00.000-07:00

Seems like we've been waiting a long time for spring in Northumberland. It sort of seems to be happening now. If I didn't know any better I could even have been tempted to say it was warm today. Here are a few random pictures from recent botany trips.

Ceratodon purpureus is a very common species but a colourful sight when it is in fruit. Many mosses fruit in spring before the vascular plant growing season gets going.

If you zoom in and look closely you should be able to see the 'struma' just below the capsules on at least some stalks. A struma is a bump on one side of the top of the seta (stalk) just below the capsule, that looks a bit like an Adam's apple.

Here is a colouful patch of mosses on a sandy edge of the River South Tyne, near where we live. The red one is Bryum pallens which is often frequent in places like this, which are contaminated with heavy metals from past mining activity. To the right of the top of the big red patch is a patch of yellow-green Philonotis fontana. The leaves of this species look opaque or matt compared to the green species to the right, which has shiny leaves. This 'matt' appearance usually means that the leaf surface has lots of tiny bumps on it so the light does not get reflected back off the surface. It took me about 5 years to be able to see the difference between matt and glossy leaves in the field, but now it seems straightforward, and I wonder why I couldn't see it before. It is a really useful character for field identification if you can spot the difference. The third species with the shinier green leaves and a hint of red underneath is Bryum pseudotriquetrum or Bryum bimum.

Always nice to see elm flowers for various reasons. One of the first flowers of spring. Nice to see elms surviving, even if we don't have many large trees any more. And as it flowers at a time of year when I'm mainly looking for bryophytes, I like to see it as it is one of the best tree species for epiphytes.

These mountain pansies are from a heavy metal contaminated (Calaminarian) grassland by the river South Tyne. This is one of the special habitats of our area and a UK BAP habitat.

Alpine penny-cress is one of the specialities of this habitat and was also in full flower today (sorry for the rubbish photo). The two other special vascular plants you find here, spring sandwort and thrift, look like they are about to come into flower in the next few days. Apart from woodland ground flora, this habitat must be the most flowery habitat around this part of the world so early in the season. It should start to be at its best in about 2 weeks time.

John

Ptyxis makes the top 100!

2009-02-05T09:59:00.000-08:00

Got an email the other day saying we've been included in a list of the top 100 botanical blogs on an American website http://www.online-college-blog.com/index.php/uncategorized/top-100-botany-blogs/.

There's quite a mixture of subjects covered by the other blogs including some bryophyte ones, which is good to see.

John

Blink and you'll miss it!

2009-01-27T10:28:00.001-08:00

On one of the wettest days of a very wet summer/autumn last year, I spent an afternoon looking for mosses and liverworts in Druridge Bay - see http://www.druridgebay.org.uk/. This was part of the 'Bioblitz' event orgainsised by Northumberland BAP. When the weather is so foul it can be dispiriting doing this kind of thing and it was a real shame for the event, as it meant that (unsurprisingly) very few punters turned up.

However, our dedication (or bonkersness) paid off as we found a very rare moss! Aloina rigida is a nationally scarce species that has never been recorded in Northumberland before. The map below (from the NBN website) gives an over optimistic impression of how common it is, as most of the dots relate to records made prior to 1950. So, not only is it scarce, it has also suffered a big decline in Britain. The next nearest previous records to Northumberland are near Edinburgh and in Durham where it has been seen twice, in 2001 and sometime before 1820!

Distribution of Aloina rigida in Britain & Ireland.

As you can see very well from the picture below, it grows in bare, stony places. The picture is from Michael Luth's excellent CD called 'Bilder von Moosen' (pictures of mosses). Ok, where it grows is not actually 'bare', it is sparsely vegetated. These kind of very open habitats are undervalued but very interesting ecologically. Many specialist species of mosses, liverworts, lichens and invertebrates thrive in these areas. One of the few positive changes to nature conservation policy in recent years has been the recognition of these habitats now as UKBAP habitat, 'open mosaics on previously developed land' as they are now officially called.

If you ignore the stalk (seta) of the spore capsule, these plants grow to no more than about 2mm high, so they are not exactly 'showy'. They are also ephemeral in nature, adapted to be able to colonise new areas quickly and probably not lasting on sites for very long as they become more thickly vegetated. As the nearest recent populations are quite a distance away from Druridge Bay the spores that gave rise to the plants we found must have travelled a very long distance by wind to get there.

John

Winter buds

2009-01-21T13:26:00.000-08:00

One of my most memorable experiences from when I was first leaning my botany was doing a 1-day training course on winter tree identification given by Nick Bertrand. Before then I had no idea that you could use characteristics of twigs (especially the buds) to identify trees in winter. I remember getting really enthused for botany after that and I also remember enjoying showing off what I had learned to my fellow MSc students in Oxleas Wood in SE London.

Some of the characteristics that are useful are: shape of buds (rounded, pointed, conical, needle-like, etc.); number of bud scales; arrangement of buds on the twig (opposite, alternate, clustered); pattern of bud scales (opposite, herringbone, random); colour of buds (can either be very useful or very misleading!); shape of leaf scars; etc. Once you get familair with these characteristics it is fairly straightforward to identify most British species to Genus, although it is more tricky to go to species level in a couple of genera. In some ways, it is easier to identify trees in winter than at other times. Winter is a good time to do your first visit when surveying a woodland, as when the trees are naked it is much easier to assess the structural characteristic of the wood and see signs of past management. The most difficult time of year for tree identification is early spring between the time when buds start to elongate and young leaves are in the process of forming.

Here are some pictures of buds from a few species that I took yesterday down the track from our house to show some of the variety.

Ash is probably the most easily recognised tree in winter. The large terminal buds are sooty-black and conical - nothing else has buds anything like this. Note that the lateral buds are much smaller and opposite.

Willow is the only genus that has buds with only one bud scale. Lime buds looks a bit similar but have two scales. The willow buds can vary quite a bit in colour (brownish-yellow, orangey, brownish-red or purplish) on different trees of the same species, at different times of year or even on the same tree. Apart from one or two species, the others are difficult to tell apart from the buds. Most willows have alternately arranged buds.

Hawthorn have quite small buds with very small leaf scars just underneath. When I was first learning, I used to find it very difficult to tell hawthorn and blackthorn apart from their bud and twig characteristics. Now I don't have any trouble at all telling them apart as I am used to their 'jizz', but if you were to ask me to describe the key difference for identification I would stuggle to put it into words.

Oaks have clusters to tan-coloured buds at the end of the twigs with lots of bud-scales, often arranged in a herringbone pattern. Beware, that some books and keys tell you that oaks are the only genus to have terminal clusters of buds, but wild cherry often does this also. You are supposed to be able to tell the 2 British species apart by counting the number of bud-scales but I have never tested this out to be able to tell if it works or not.

Alder buds are one of the most attractive. They have a unique puple colour with a floury bloom. The lateral buds are on short stalks which is unique amongst British species.

Alder are the most decorated of British deciduous trees in winter. The old cones are unmistakable. This picture shows some tightly-closed, long males catkins with a cluster of immature female cones in the background.

Fragrant orchids

2009-01-17T12:40:00.000-08:00

Ok, I know I said before (see 'Orchid overdose' - July2007) that I might never blog about orchids again, but I did just say 'might'. I suppose I now have to admit that I've become an orchid fancier (almost). I've been surveying upland hay meadows in the North Pennines for the last 3 years and although orhcids are quite uncommon in hay meadows now, I have seen some of them often enough to start to get interested. I had a lot to learn about British orchids and I found Michael Foley and Sidney Clarke's book very useful. I didn't know the fragrant orchids at all when I started but have now seen all three types.

Up to a few years ago most people were happy to call them all 'fragrant orchid'. Frances Rose (who must be a leading candidate for being Britain's most outstanding field naturalist) divided them into three types a long time ago. His view has now been backed up by DNA analysis. They are likely to appear as separate species (or sub-species) in the next edition of Stace and it will be interesting to see what kind of patterns emerge in geohgraphical distribtution and habitat preferences of the three types, as more people start to record and map them. If you look at the distribution maps on the BSBI website http://www.bsbimaps.org.uk/atlas/main.php you will see how under-recorded the sub-species are currently compared to the species.

This is Gymnadenia conopsea borealis (or just G. borealis if you prefer), which I have found in eight different meadows. It seems to be easily the most common of the three around here. In the hay meadows it is normally now confined to unmown (and unfertilised) banks, often growing in quite acidic U4c vegetation with species like betony and bitter-vetch. The lower lip of the flower (labellum) is almost not lobed at all and is longer than wide. The two lateral sepals are not exactly horizontal, but point a bit downwards.

I've found this one, Gymnadenia conopsea conopsea three times, but only a very small number of individuals in each case. (Sorry about the rubbish photo!). It is supposed to prefer more calcareous conditions. The labellum is much more lobed than borealis with the 3 lobes being about equal in size. Overall the labellum is about as long as wide. The lateral sepals are wider than borealis but still point slightly downwards.

This one is (I think) Gymnadenia conopsea densiflora, which I've only found once. It is supposed to prefer damper grasslands than the other two. It is also lobed and the middle lobe is supposed to be smaller than the two lateral lobes - although that isn't very obvious on this specimen. Overall the labellum is wider than long. The lateral sepals are wide like conposea but this time they do point out exactly horizontally. I found quite a big population of this growing on the edge of a meadow right on the riverbank of the Tees near Cronkley Bridge. The three types are supposed to have a slightly different smell, but I haven't sniffed them enough to know if that works for me yet.

Sound easy doesn't it. Well it's not! I thought it was fairly easy until I found the densiflora population. Both conopsea and borealis were there also, but the most common Gymnadenia there appeared to be intermnediate between densiflora and conopsea. Presumably these are hybrids. The three types are probably quite closely related, so its not surprising that if they grow together they would hybridise. Even if they have fairly strict habitat preferences, it is often possible to get a mixture of quite different soil conditions within a very small space, so not that unlikley to get them together at least sometimes.

They are nice plants. Its good fun trying to figure out a new botanical puzzle. But the main reason I like them is because they always grow in nice habitats.

John

Grass identification and other botany CPD courses

2008-12-13T09:20:00.000-08:00

*This post is from 2009 but we are running grass identification and other courses in 2011 - see our website www.ptyxis.com for details*
We haven't updated the blog for a while as we've been flat out working - including developing CPD courses for next year. Running our own courses is a big risk for a small consultancy to take, but we are so aware of the limited provision for plant species identification and ecology courses in the UK of what professional ecologists really need - the FSC runs loads of courses, but many don't really have professional ecologists in mind - more amateur twitchers who want to see as many species as possible - and generally are not led by trained teachers (there are a few notable exceptions!), so we are trying to fill the gap.

As a teacher, I get frustrated that many people are paying out a lot in fees to attend courses that could be more professionally delivered. Being a v experienced ecologist or taxonomist does not make you an effective teacher. Tutors often don't differentiate their teaching. Differentiation is one of many professional teaching skills, that you are taught during a PGCE, but that takes experience to apply and do really well. It also takes a lot of extra work as you effectively prepare 3 or 4 different lessons for every element of your training course, so that you can offer different levels of learning to your group. This is crucial as in any adult group, no matter what you say on the course advert, you will ALWAYS get people with a mix of different aptitudes and abilities. Professional tuition should address this, and not just deliver a course at a vague mid-level for everyone, so that some people are left swamped and others are bored as it's all too basic.

Details of our 2009 ecology CPD courses are on our website at www.ptyxis.com/training.html and include grass identification (focus on id of useful indicator species and using grasses to evaluate habitats and assess the botanical value of sites, rather than a 'lets see loads and loads of species' approach), aquatic plant identification and a wildlife law training workshop.

Clare

It doesn't exist until I've seen it!

2008-09-23T13:01:00.000-07:00

In my favourite film, 'Down by Law', Jack and Zac share a prision cell and really dislike each other. At one point they have another argument and Jack says to Zac (or maybe it was Zac to Jack), "from now on as far as I'm concerned, you don't exist". Zac (or maybe it was Jack) wants to sound tough so he says "yeh, well you don't exist either".

I was out surveying on Tuesday on a remote bit of blanket bog in Kielder with Julia who is from Quatemala. We found this lizard and Julia was very pleased as she had never seen a reptile in the wild in Britain before. She said "now I believe that reptiles exist in Britain". That struck a chord with me because there are many species that I didn't believe existed until I saw them for the first time.

In my twenties I was (still am) a very keen birdwatcher, but for some strange reason it took me years to see my first little grebe. I did lots of birdwatching and went to lots of the right places to see little grebes in the Lee Valley near where I lived at the time. Even though I knew very well what they looked like from looking at pictures it was really difficult for me to believe that they really existed until I actually saw one. Since then I've seen them loads of times but I always get a great kick out of seeing them every time now!

Other species I still don't believe exist include: scaup, wood warbler, garden warbler (probably have seen or heard these but not realised it), pine marten, Carex aquatilis, Bryum caespiticum and of course many many millions more!
John

Dwarf birch on an English hill

2008-09-17T02:02:00.000-07:00

Last week I was doing some 'condition assessment' of blanket bog sites in Northumberland for as part of a nation-wide survey for Natural England. We have to use a ridiculous method which can't possibly tell you what condition the bog is in, but that's another story! One day on a very remote site in Northumberland, my co-surveyor Fiona came back to the car at lunch time with a twig of Betula nana (dwarf birch) in her hand. I couldn't believe my eyes and got very excited as I knew there were only 2 native sites for it in England. When I say 2 sites I really mean 2 bushes (ok, one of the sites has 2 tiny bushes quite close together). I also knew that one of the sites was somewhere in the Northumberland hills but I thought the chances of Fiona stumbling upon that site by accident in such a remote place were extremely slim.

Well believe it or not that's exactly what happened. What are the chances of that happening? neither of us had any idea that the plant was on the site. The site we were surveying is about 7 or 8 miles from the nearest public road and covers about 3,000 hectares. Professor George Swan (who wrote the 'Flora of Northumberland' originally found the plant on this site in 1973 new to south Northumberland. There is a very old record from north Northumberland but nobody has refound it there for a very long time.

Here's another map from BSBI's website showing its British (and lack of Irish!) distribution. I believe that the 2 records in Lancashire are of introduced plants. There is quite a scattering of records in the central highlands and the north of Scotland. This is an artic-alpine species whose core range is really in the artic and boreal zones.

I couldn't resist including another photo of Tetraplodon mnioides (see the entry of 13 August 2007). I think this is probably my favourite moss now - its definitely one of the most colourful species. It is still quite uncommon in Northumberland. There are only 16 records for it in VC67 - south Northumberland overall but I've found it 3 times in just over a year. I guess this probably means that it is increasing, but who knows really?

I've always found it growing on dead sheep before, but this time there were 5 seperate small clumps on the forestry road leading up to the Betula nana site. I guess it must have been growing on deer dung here.

John

Northern hawk's-beard

2008-09-06T09:15:00.000-07:00

I've always thought it very strange that the common names of so many plants are named after parts of animals. Hawk's-beard, hawkbit, hawkweed, cat's-ear, and ox-tongue all look confusigly similar. There are lots more - dog's-tail, cat's-tail, squirrel-tail, mare's-tail, rat's-tail, mouse-tail, hare's-tail, horse-tail, fox-tail, buck's-horn, crane's-bill, stork's-bill, adders-tongue, hart's-tongue, weasel's-snout, ox-eye, bird's-eye, hare's-ear, mouse-ear, lamb's-ear, buck's-beard, goat's-beard, old man's-beard (yes we're animals too!), dog's-tooth, dragon's-teeth (does dragon count?), oxlip, bird's-foot, hare's-foot, crow-foot, colt's-foot, cock's-foot, goose-foot, cockspur, larkspur, parrot's-feather, etc. Unfortunately dog's-dibble is no longer in common usage. One plant is even named after 2 animals, mouse-ear hawkweed. Sometimes these names are helpful when trying to remember which plant it is but most of the time they are not helpful. How many people know what a hawk's beard looks like and even if they did, would they spot the resemblance to the plant? I guess the real reason is that after most plants have been named its difficult to think up original names for new plants so the plant namers start to clutch at straws.

But anyway, back to northern hawk's-beard, or if you prefer (as I do) Crepis mollis - much simpler! I've had a good year for Crepis mollis this year. Here's a picture of it taken by my colleague Rebecca last year near Nenthead in the Cumbrian pennines.

Yes, I know it just looks like a load of dandelions, but it really is a very special plant - honest! Its particularly relevant for me as its main habitat is upland hay meadows which is what my day job is all about and I live right in the centre of its British distribution in south-west Northumberland.

This map from BSBIs website shows its distribution in Britain. The darker coloured dots (there are not very many of them) are records from recent years. Not only is it a scarce and very loclaised plant in Britain, but it has also declined a lot in recent decades due to agricultural intensification.

As my job in summer involves lots of surveying in upland hay meadows, I'm always on the look out for it. Also, this year it was chosen as one of the species in BSBIs threatened plants survey so I've been looking for it in some of the sites where it was recorded a long time ago. Although I couldn't find it in a few of these places, it is hanging on in a good number of its old sites in this part of the world. My colleague Fiona Corby also managed to find 2 new sites for it in Allendale including one on a large herb-rich bank with upland hay meadow type vegetation which had about 500 plants of Crepis mollis on it. This was particularly good news as we think this could well be the biggest population left in the country. The landowners are pleased that they have it and are willing to try to do the right things to conserve it which is also good news.

John

More bog desmids from Widdybank Fell

2008-09-06T08:45:00.000-07:00

Chris Carter continues to find some amazing-looking desmids in the gungy bits of Sphagnum I've been sending him from Widdybank Fell. Last time I sent him just 2 bits of Sphagnum and he has been busy for months finding more and more species of these microscopic algae in amongst the Sphagnum - and he's not finished yet!

Here are some of his latest finds -

There is a Dutch method of assessing the conservation value of wetland sites using desmid species called the Coesel method. Based on what Chris has found so far from just 5 small samples of Sphagnum from Widdybank Fell, the site now has a score of 8 or 9 out of 10. I'm sure its only a matter of time before it reaches 10 out of 10.

John

A mountain stream in Regent's Park??

2008-09-06T05:22:00.000-07:00

The shot below shows a water feature in the 'nature study' area of Regent's Park in central London. On a recent bryophyte survey we did for the park this was one of the few habitats we found with a well-developed bryophyte community. The sheltered water feature creates a suitable humid environment for several species that otherwise occur only sparsely in the area.

However the biggest surprise was finding Racomitrium aciculare sitting on rocks by the 'stream'. This species has never been recorded in Middlesex before and is very uncommon in south and east England as you can see from this distribution map from the NBN website.

In the north and west of Britain you can almost gaurantee to find it on rocks by any upland stream, but this habitat is absent from most of lowland Britain.

The neat round cushions with the white hairs sticking up in the picture above are Grimmia pulvinata which is a very common species on rocks and walls everywhere. Racomitrium aciculare is the more straggly dark green plant in the middle of the top of the picture, with a few more shoots on the top right.

The main focus of the survey was to look for bryophyte epiphytes (plants that grow on trees). These were fairly sparse and mainly confined to a small number of species. Many epiphytic species cannot live in areas with high athmospheric pollution. In recent decades particulate air pollution associated with coal fires has almost gone and as a result in recent years several epiphytic species have been sucessfully recolonising areas they have been missing from for a very long time. However most truly urban areas still have relatively few epiphytes.

The picture above shows the most common type of epiphyte community we found, comprised mainly of the lichens Physcia adscendens and Xanthoria parietina, with a little of the moss Orthotrichum diaphanum. Most Orthotrichum species are epiphytes and Orthotrichum diaphanum is the one that is most tolerant of air pollution.

On a small number of trees the bryophyte element of the epiphytic community was more developed but it usually consited of just Orthotrichum diaphanum and Rhynchostegium confertum. Interestingly, their were occasional cushions of both Tortula muralis and Grimmia pulvinata on the trees. These species normally grow on walls or rocks and only rarely grow on trees, but something about the tree habitat in London makes them behave differently.

There are many London plane trees in London parks and at first glance these would seem to be unpromising habitat for epiphytic species as the trees shed their outer bark in small patches very regularly. This habit allows the trees to cope with polluted areas better than most other tree species as every time the bark is shed it results in a fresh clean new bark free from grime, helping the tree to breathe easier. It turned out that London plane is in fact the best tree species for bryophytes in central London (apart from elms which are much less common). The epiphyte community is often fairly well developed on the base of the larger trees where the bark is no longer shed so regularly. The texture and chemistry of the bark must make the suface more suitable for epiphytes than the other tree species.

John

Ecology careers

2008-07-23T10:53:00.000-07:00

Want a career in ecology?

As a professional ecologist and botanist, and a trained teacher, I often get asked for advice on ecology careers. Training is a major part of my freelance work, and I teach undergraduates and postgraduates at Newcastle University. I also sit on the Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management’s (IEEM) working group on the ecology skills gap, a project addressing the fact that many biology and ecology degree courses do not train students in the vocational skills that employers are looking for.

Working in nature conservation is extremely competitive. There are currently more opportunities in commercial ecological consultancies, working mainly for the corporate sector (such as property developers, wind energy companies etc), but also for local authorities and government agencies. To maximise your opportunities during your early career, you will need to be prepared to develop your CV by volunteering and to move around the country for work.

Top tips for careers in ecology

What is your summer project about? If you want a job in the UK ecology sector, make sure you do a project on British or Irish habitats and /or species! Although the large ecological consultancies do require ecologists to conduct survey work abroad, this is generally in Europe or North America. If you do a project on African or Asian ecology, expect to work for organizations who work in Africa or Asia, such as universities or international charities. You will not be attractive to the British conservation sector or commercial consultancies.

Build up the evidence for your skills by volunteering. You need to make time to do this at weekends; it is at least worth as much as a high grade degree, arguably more. There are plenty of first class honours graduates without jobs because they have not got any work experience. You need to show that you have the skills listed in IEEM’s booklet ‘what every graduate should know’ which is available from http://www.ieem.org.uk/

Botany – by which I mean plant identification and survey skills – is in demand. Consultancies are very short of young graduates who are proficient botanists. Join BSBI, attend their field meetings and put this on your CV. No one expects you to be an expert overnight; but you do need to show a serious commitment to improving your field identification skills and going on BSBI meetings demonstrates this. BSBI also offer a one day test and a certificate, called a Field Skills Identification Qualification or FISQ, to evidence how good a botanist you really are, which also looks good on your CV. See http://www.bsbi.org.uk/html/field_skills.html

Whether you plan to be a mammal ecologist, entomologist or an ornithologist, all commercial consultancies need graduates who can do a Phase 1 habitat survey. Find out about this by reading the survey handbook (it’s amazing how many interview candidtates don’t do this!); go on a short course (The Field Studies Council http://www.field-studies-council.org/ and IEEM www.ieem.net both run Phase 1 habitat survey courses); do a voluntary Phase 1 survey for your local Wildlife Trust to prove to employers that you can really do it!

Be careful when you choose an MSc course. Having an MSc will not assist you in finding a job if you still have little or no work experience. Look for an MSc that has a strong vocational element: training in ecological survey methods combined with business skills, like project management and negotiation skills, which you will need in the workplace.

Good luck!!

Clare O'Reilly

Blysmus bliss!

2008-07-03T12:29:00.001-07:00

As you can see from my face, I was pleased to find Blysmus compressus (flat sedge) the other day when Clare and I looked for it at one of its previously known sites near where we live at Lambley, on the South Tyne river, Northumberland.

The river's edge habitat (which is regularly flooded) is apparently one of its typical habitats in Northumberland. There was a very big colony here - we estimated over 6,000 flowering spikes.

Flat sedge is a good name for it as the inflorescence is very flattened, which makes it fairly easy to separate from other sedges.

Close-up of Blysmus with its stigmas sticking out.

This is an uncommon species nationally with a real cluster of records around our part of the north of England as you can see from the BSBIs distribution map -http://www.bsbimaps.org.uk/atlas/map_page.php?spid=245.0&sppname=Blysmus%20compressus&commname=Flat-sedge

We were looking for this as part of the BSBI's threatened plant survey. Botanists all over Britian are going out searching old sites for 10 uncommon and declining species (including Blysmus) and recording detailed information and accurate grid references when they find it or reasons why it might have gone extinct when they don't find it.

In my view this is the best survey that BSBI has organised for a long time, but its a shame they are keeping it a secret. If you want to find out any more about it you will have to contact your county recorder.

John

Small-white orchid and bluebell banks

2008-06-14T01:24:00.000-07:00

The Weardale Gazette recently reported that "John O'Reilly excited himself by finding a rare plant in a meadow near Wolsingham". The rare plant in question was Alchemilla acutiloba which is not that rare in Weardale but is very rare elsewhere. Well, yesterday I 'excited myself'' even more by finding 8 spikes of small-white orchid Pseudorchis albida on a bank in the Holwick area of Teesdale. Out of about 450 meadows that I've surveyed so far this is only the 2nd time I have found it and the other time it was shown to me by Linda Robinson.

I surveyed this meadow on 5th June and was puzzled by this orchid spike in bud:

I assumed at the time that it was probably Platanthera chlorantha which is quite uncommon and a nice thing to find, but it didn't look quite right. The flower buds showed no sign of the elongated pedicels you would expect with greater butterfly-orchid but I thought that might just be because of the early stage of development. But the stem leaves seemed too big and the flower buds were very numerous and congested on the spike. I thought the stem leaves and overall shape of the spike was right for Pseudorchis but I doubted it was that because the plant was about 10 inches high already which I thought was too big and also because it is so rare around here.

So here it is in all its glory 8 days later:

It is not the most spectacular-looking species in the world but a nice find beacuse it is so uncommon and it usually indicates very nice habitat. One of the best things about it was that I told the farmer that I found it and he rang me back later on to ask how could he grow more of them on the bank!

I didn't take a proper habitat shot but you can see some of the associated species in this shot:

If you look closely you will see lots of leaves of Succisa pratensis and Hyacinthoides non-scripta, some Potentilla erecta and Conopodium majus a flowering stem of Festuca rubra, and STOP PRESS!..... I've just this minute noticed something with a spike of flowers in bud in the bottom right hand corner which I think is Persicaria vivipara - I will have to go back again to check that out.

This bank was quite large, about 15-20 metres top to bottom and about 100m long, the vegetation was fairly homogenous throughout. The dominant species were Devil's-bit scabious, bluebell, pignut, tormentil and creeping soft-grass. I was very puzzled as to what this would be in the NVC but I think I've worked it out now. One of the best places to look for Pseudorchis albida in upland hay meadows is apparently in U4c vegetation on banks (see my blogs from last year about banks in meadows). I think the vegetation above is a form of MG5c which grades into U4c depending on the soil characteristics. The main difference between the two is the grass component of the flora. MG5c has more of the broad-leaved bulkier grasses (here it had both Holcus species, Dactylis glomerata and Helictotrichon pubescens) and bulkier herbs like Centaures nigra, whereas the dominant grasses in U4c tend to be fine-leaved species like Festuca rubra and ovina and Agrostis capillaris.

Bluebells are a prominant feature of grasslands in meadows in Teesdale and in the Greta valley. In the NVC bluebell does not feature prominently in any of the tables describing the published grassland communities, so it has taken me a while to work out which communities are involved. Not far from the bank described above it occurs in another very large bank in vegetation with some similarities to the type of MG5c described above, except that in has some more typical acid grassland indicators like Galium saxatile and has a canopy of bracken. This 2nd type of vegetation is clearly a good match to U20a.

A third type of grassland where it occurs abundantly is almost identical to the U20a except that it has no bracken. So you could call this either 'U20a without bracken' or 'U4a with lots of bluebell'?

A forth type is quite common in narrow strips along the base of walls or along the lines where there used to be a wall within a field. This vegetation has clearly developed along these walls since they were erected and is not relict woodland vegetation. Usually the vegetation is overwhelmingly dominated by Holcus mollis and Hyacinthoides non-scripta, sometimes with the odd bit of Urtica dioica, Dactylis glomerata, Dryopteris filix-mas or Conopodium majus. This vegetation is an excellent match to W25a, except that there is no bramble or other woody species. Perhaps it is a stage in the development towards W25a!

It also occurs in more typical MG3 and the richer forms of MG6 that grade into MG3.

Eyebrights in old hay meadows

2008-06-07T04:20:00.000-07:00

The hay meadow survey season has come around again. My job at this time of year is to survey lots of upland hay meadows in the north Pennines (the bits of the Pennines in Durham, Cumbria and Northumberland), to advise on their management and to find species-rich meadows to use as a source of 'green hay' for introducing seed to other meadows being restored nearby. Species-rich upland hay meadows ('MG3b' in the NVC) differ from southern or lowland meadows in having lots of wood crane's-bill and other northern montane species.

Wood crane's-bill in an upland hay meadow in Weardale

In a lot of the meadows the sheep have only been put out about 2 weeks ago and this week more and more species have been coming into flower. The meadows will probably be at their most colourful next week. The picture below shows a close up of a fairly common type of vegetation that we get in the north Pennines meadows. This is what I call MG6+. It is semi-improved and so lacks the special northern montane species. It is often quite herb-rich with more than 60% cover of herbs, but it is not really species-rich, being dominated by a few common species like red clover, buttercups, pignut, ribwort plantain and often a lot of yellow rattle. This vegetation is a bit too rich to fit in to standard MG6 and not rich enough to be called MG3 or MG5 so I call it MG6+.

Colourful MG6+ vegetation in a meadow in Teesdale

Just before the season started this year I got my eyebrights determined by the BSBI's eyebright expert Alan Silverside. My job gives me the opportunity to access lots of meadow on private land most of which may never have been visited by a botanist. So, it is worth making the effort to try to work out some of the critical groups or at least to collect specimens so that an expert can identify them.

Euphrasia arctica arctica

It seems that the eyebright I have been finding most frequently in these meadows is Euphrasia arctica arctica. This is an 'old hay meadow' specialist. Until a few years ago it was thought that this sub-arctic taxon (whose main stronghold is the Faroe Islands) was confined in Britain to Orkney and Shetland. However it turns out that it probably occured throughout the range of Euphrasia arctica in Britain (i.e. most of the northern half and upland areas in Britain) but has largely died out in most places due to both loss of old hay meadow habitat and being hybidised out by the more competitive, 'weedy' Euphrasia arctica borealis.

As with other eyebrights, hybrids are common which makes identification a bit of a nightmare! I can't distinguish between true Euphrasia arctica and hybrids so I collect specimens and allow the expert to identify them properly. In the field I can only split the upland hay meadow eyebrights into 2 main groups - The Euphrasia arctica types and the Euphrasia rostkoviana (officinalis) types which are much rarer. Last year I found Euphrasia rostkoviana montana (Euphrasia officinalis monticola) 4 times out of about 250 meadows surveyed. It has very large flowers for a Euphrasia and has long hairs with tiny glands on the end.

This is now a UKBAP species as it has suffered a massive decline and grows only in upland hay meadows which have themselves suffered a massive decline. Its current range in Britain is Wales, Yorkshire Dales, north Pennines, Cumbria and the Scottish Borders. Alan was delighted to see this again as there had been no authenticated records from the Pennines for about 30 years and he thought it may have gone completely extinct in the Pennines. I will be looking out for it carefully again this year.

John

There's something else in the bog!

2008-06-07T01:13:00.000-07:00

See our post of 19th January for pictures of amazing-looking testate amoebae taken by Chris Carter. Chris really wanted to find desmids (a type of unicellular alga with lateral symmetry) in the sphagnum samples but the samples I collected the first time were not from the right bit of the bog. So since then I have been collecting the most gungy, horrible-looking bits of sphagnum from bog pools. The more gungy they are the more excited Chris gets!

Here are some stunning photos of some of the desmids he has found in sphagnum samples from Widdybank Fell in upper Teesdale:

This next one is a testate amoeba rather than a desmid.

There is a method of assigning conservation value to mire sites based on the species of desmids that is used in the Netherlands. Using the first 3 small sphagnum samples Chris found 17 species (8 of which were red list) which already gives Widdybank fell a score of 6 out of 10. The pictures above are from 2 more samples collected recently and already Chris has found several extra species so this will result in an even higher conservation score from a very small amount of sampling.

The bog at Widdybank Fell is very species-rich and is well known for its conservation value for other groups of species. On my last visit Viola rupestris and Gentiana verna were flowering in the limestone grassland surrounding the bog and Minuartia stricta (at its only British site) was just about to flower in a flush. There was constant calling from golden plovers in the background and we almost stepped on a dunlin.

Viola rupestris growing on eroding sugar limestone at Widdybank Fell

John

The flower and the fly

2008-05-27T13:28:00.000-07:00

Bank of globeflower by River Ithing.

Its always good to see a bank full of globeflower! Its not a common sight even up here in the north! The flowers have their own wow factor and area sign of a very good habitat. But apart from all that, there is a very interesting story to be told about globeflower flies. To these critters the globe-flower really is their world!
Guess what's inside me?

If you google globeflower you will find lots of scientific papers on globeflower flies (or Chiastocheta species). The flower and the flies are a classic case of mutualism (what people used to call symbiosis). They have co-evolved, as globeflower depends on these particular flies for pollination and the larvae of these particular flies feed on nothing else but globeflower seeds.

That's interesting enough but it gets better! There are at least 6 different species of these flies and several of them can co-exist in the same flower without competing with each other. Each occupies a slightly different niche within this tiny secret world. They largely seem to avoid competing with each other by developing at different stages of the seed development.

A big fly and a small fly

So, next time you find a globeflower, take a look inside. We had a look inside some flowers by the River Irthing on the Cumbria/Northumberland border on Sunday and found about 5 or 6 flies of different sizes in each one.

However, if you look on the NBN gateway website you will see that there are hardly any records for any Chiastocheta species in the whole country and none at all for our part of the world in the north Pennines and south Northumberland! But they must be here! Otherwise how would the flowers reproduce, unless they just reproduce vegetatively all the time? It just goes to show how little we know about the natural world still. Invertebrates in the uplands seem to have had hardly any attention.

And finally, nothing to do with globeflowers or flies but we found this toad at a place called Tod Hole so we just had to say goodbye from 'Toad of Tod Hole'!

I'm Toad of Tod Hole!

John & Clare

Hummocks of brown Sphagnum

2008-05-04T02:16:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was a very satisfying day in the field. I went up to Kielder to check out a site that had old records for Sphagnum austinii. This is a special species for several reasons. It is very uncommon nationally and has only been recorded at 4 sites in Northumberland. It always grows only in the best quality bog habitat and in bogs that have not been mis-managed. And it used to be our most abundant peat-forming Sphagnum species in the past. Estimates reckon it formed about 80% of our peat and sometimes it is still possible to identify its leaves (due to the distinctive lamellae on the green cells) at the bottom of the peat. Here is a close-up image of the surface of a hummock:Sphagnum austinii

In the few sites where it is found nowadays it can form very big hummocks which are very hard. Some people say you can sit on it and leave no impression behind but maybe that's exaggerating slightly! You can imagine how it would be a good peat-former when you see those big hummocks. I found two hummocks of it yesterday in a very wet bog. These hummocks were not very big but they were easy to find as most of the bog was incredibly flat. The few hummocks of Sphagnum that were there really stood out.

Low hummock of Sphagnum austinii in wet bog at Kielder

In the picture above you can see a lot of surface water in the background . This is the kind of bog where it would be useful to have snow shoes. The extensive wet part of the bog had about 50% surface water interspersed with flat carpets of Sphagnum rather than hummocks. Most of the Sphagnum was papillosum, magellanicum, capillifolium and tenellum. There was also lots of sundews, cranberry and bog rosemary. In the NVC this vegetation is known as M18a. This is known to be one of the wettest types of bog communities, described as 'saturated' and this example was probably towards the wetter end of this normally wet community.

The brown of Sphagnum austinii contrasting with the red of Sphagnum magellanicum on the left.

From the pictures above you can see it is a very brown species and this is a good way of initially recognising it in the field. Where you find Sphagnum austinii it is always worth looking for another uncommon brown species Sphagnum fuscum. This differs in having much more narrow branch leaves - like a brown version of Sphagnum capillifolium. It is a bit more common than austinii in the north of Scotland but it is even more rare than austinii in Northumberland.

Surface of Sphagnum fuscum hummock.

Before yesterday it had only ever been recorded at one site in Northumberland - the famous Muckle Moss. Sure enough, after a bit of searching I was able to find a single hummock.

Prominent hummock of Sphagnum fuscum in flat area of bog.

Both of these species are indicators of really good quality habitat and both have suffered massive declines. If one of these wet bogs is drained or burnt even once these species quickly dissapear, usually never to return. Yesterday the way the tiny number of hummocks of these two species stood out from the flat bog surface was quite melancholy as it made them look very isolated!

John

Epiphytes in a Northumberland wood

2008-02-09T11:06:00.000-08:00

A couple of weeks ago I went out hunting bryophytes with Doug McCutcheon and Ian Craft. We were trying to relocate a rare moss that Doug had found a few years ago in the woods between Bellingham and Hareshaw Linn waterfall. The woods were fairly ordinary at first with mainly the usual common species present. When we got about half way up we started to find more interesting species. The epiphyte communities were especially interesting, particularly close to the stream where the athomosphere was most humid.

As a rule in Britain, the further west you go, the more diverse the epiphytes. There are many species that have an extreme western distribution in Britain. So unsurprisingly the best places to find these species in Northumberland are probably in the extreme west of the county. The valleys of the South Tyne and Irthing are probably well worth exploring.

But the woods at Bellingham had some very nice uncommon species. Ian took all of the photos below. The first one is a nice shot of Frullania dilatata which is a common enough species but very noticable and attractive when it is this dark red colour. There is a tiny bit of Radula complanata (the pale green one) poking in at the top of the photo. This is also reasonably common but usually grows in fairly good quality habitat for epiphytes.

This little cushion-forming moss growing on the twig is Ulota drummondii. Most Ulota species nearly always grow on twigs. This is a fairly uncommon species in Britain and in England it is very uncommon and now more or less confined to Northumberland and nearby bits of Cumbria and Durham. I had never seen it before but Doug has found it several times in Northumberland and was able to point out its distinguishing features to me. The lower parts of the shoots have a reddish tinge and the peristome teeth are white and stick out.

By the stream on several trees there were lots of patches of this Metzgeria (a small thalloid liverwort). Unlike the very common Metzgeria furcata, this species has attenuate (narrowed to the tip) branches that stick out and are covered with tiny green gemmae (vegetative propagules). Doug and I both brought some home to check which species it was. Doug's plant was Metzgeria fruticulosa but mine looked more like Metzgeria temperata. I've sent this away to be checked by the BBS referee for Metzgeria. If it is right then its only the 2nd record for Northumberland for this species, the first one was only last year from a tree next to the South Tyne.

There are two epiphytic lichens (which Doug identified) in this shot. The one on the right with the light brown/reddish bits at the end of the thalli is Peltigera praetextata. Clinging closer to the tree and occupying most of the rest of the photo is Protopannaria pezizoides. This was a stiking species forming big patches, the red bits looked a bit redder in real life. Doug was very excited to find this as it is fairly rare, mainly occuring in north and west Scotland and had not been recorded from this wood since 1897! There was at least one other epiphytic lichen that we saw in the wood which is a good indicator of long ecological continuity in woodland.

Britain probably has more variety in its epiphytic communities than any other country in Europe (maybe apart from Norway and Ireland), but they get virtually zero attention in the conservation world. One of my 'big ideas' is to some day do a detailed study of epiphyte communities accross the country. As far as I know the type of comprehensive study I have in mind has only been done once before by JJ Barkman in Holland. But before I can embark on something so ambitious I really need to develop my ID skills more. After putting a lot of time in over 5 years I'm starting to feel like I'm getting there with bryophytes, but while I'm still learning them I just don't have enough room in my brain to cope with lichens also.

However, watch out for my tome on British Epiphyte communities in about 40 years time!

There's something in the bog!

2008-01-19T05:33:00.000-08:00

It still always amazes me just how mind-boggling the diversity of wild plants and animals is and how little any one person can ever hope to learn about it. Have a look at these pictures of testate amobae taken by Chris Carter from blanket bog on the watershed between Weardale and Allendale.

I met Chris on a training course last year and as he knew I was interested in Sphagnum he asked me to send him some samples so that he could have a look at what was living in the water amongst the Sphagnum. Chris was particularly interested to see what desmids there were, but he mainly found amobae in the samples I sent him as the samples were mainly from the drier bits of the bog.

Here is a good link on desmids http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/indexmag.html?http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/wimsmall/algdr.html

and here's one on testate amobae http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/indexmag.html?http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/artjun03/gsamoebae.html

It was really difficult to choose only a few of Chris's photos but here are some of my favourites...

Meet Arcella arenaria...

What has this Nebella swallowed?

You wouldn't want to meet Euglypha compressa on your way home on a dark night!

Later that evening... Nebella again. I think it had too much kebab. Or maybe it was the fresh air?

John

North Pennines Sphagna project

2008-01-14T03:33:00.000-08:00

Sphagnum subnitens

The Sphagna research project involves recording vascular plants, bryophytes and macrolichens, together with a range of environmental variables, in 200 quadrats in randomly selected upland one km squares. The project aims to investigate the ecological niches occupied by species of Sphagnum that occur in blanket bog and wet heath in the North Pennines. Results will be applied to hone upland condition assessment methodologies used in the North Pennines and may generate hypotheses for future work. This project is part of a suite of research funded by the Peatscapes Project. Peatscapes aims to conserve and enhance the internationally important peatland resource within the North Pennines (see below for more about Peatscapes).

Bog pool in Novermber!

As the field work was conducted in November, these photos are not very colourful!!

Version of M19 heather/hare’s-tail cottongrass blanket mire with canes marking quadrat extent

Observations so far, from 90 quadrats completed, include:

We anticipated that species such as Sphagnum subnitens (pictured above) Sphagnum tenellum and Sphagnum compactum may be associated with blanket bog in poor or damaged condition in the North Pennines and so would be useful as negative indicator species. It is surprising that, so far, two of these species were found rarely and Sphagnum compactum was not found at all.

Overall more of the blanket bog in the North Pennines appears to be in reasonably good condition (i.e. with active peat formation) than we had anticipated.

The predominant type of blanket bog vegetation in the North Pennines AONB is the ‘M19heather/hare’s-tail cottongrass blanket mire’ community. Much of this vegetation, which is apparently in good condition, is quite species-poor and often has a low cover of Sphagnum. Heather Calluna vulgaris and hare’s-tail cottongrass Eriophorum vaginatum are often the dominant plants and, where they are very abundant, these species allow little space for other bog species to coexist with them.

Areas that have been ‘damaged’ in some way (e.g. by burning or erosion) can sometimes be locally relatively species-rich. Many of the liverwort species found tend to grow in these areas more frequently than in more ‘intact’ areas of bog. This may be because areas of shorter vegetation or bare peat allow more opportunity for a wider range of species to coexist until the heather and cottongrass take over.

These observations pose some interesting questions including:

Is some form of disturbance desirable in order to maintain high species diversity in M19 blanket bog?

Or, is it desirable, for other environmental reasons, to avoid disturbance and so aim to maintain a lower species-diversity?

Like a lot of scientific research, I think that this project will raise many more questions than it answers! You can read more about Peatscapes here: http://www.northpennines.org.uk/index.cfm?articleid=12218

Clare

Christmas day walk

2007-12-27T10:48:00.000-08:00

We've had some severe frosts over the past week, to -6C during the day and colder at night, so have stuck by the stove as walking up our long steep drive (no 4x4!) was enough! Christmas day was mild and bright, so we did a 5 mile walk around the South Tyne valley. From our house you can walk along the disused railway or on open moorland. The Pennine Way crosses Lambley Common , about 1/4 mile westwards up the fellside from our driveway, via a black grouse lek, although we've not seen this spectacle yet as I don't like early mornings!

I don't think we have said where we are on this blog. Railway Cottages, near the hamlet of Lambley, are two mid-Victorian former railway signalman's cottages on the disused railway between Alston and Haltwhistle. Our only close neighbour is Waughold Holme farm, now a holiday home, although a local farmer rents the fields, so we are surrounded by sheep and (too many) rabbits.

On Christmas morning we walked to Lambley viaduct (below), about 5 minutes from our cottage, and crossed the River South Tyne on the little footbridge below the arches -today the river was fast-flowing with milky taupe water, but it actually froze over last week.

There is a disused quarry, I think for milstone grit for roadstone on the north bank below Castle Hill, which we searched for bryophytes but found mainly swathes of Eurynchium striatum.

The footpath cuts up the hill towards Ashholme and then back along the eastern fringe of the mixed conifier and oak woodland that is a feature of South Tynedale. Most of the North Pennines is unwooded - the trees disappearing long ago, replaced by cones of lead mine spoil or in-by pastures. The woods here are planted through with conifers, which is a shame, but it does provide habitat for red squirrels. We have had a red squirrel a couple of times near the house, and you do see them regularly around Slaggyford, but sadly I think their days are numbered in South Tynedale due to the ever expanding numbers of grey squirrel.

View westwards from Ashholme farm towards Lambley village with iconic dry stone wall

Oakeyside Wood

Oakeyside Wood is aptly named, being Quercus petraea, with thousands of common cowwheat plants in early Summer, which reminds me of Devon, where these yellow flowers are a feature of the acidic woodland soils near Dartmoor. The understory was sparse, mostly holly, and there was one female holly shrub, which had been disfigured by walkers breaking branches for its berries.

At Towsbank Wood the footpath cuts down to the river floodplain beside some river cliffs.

Species on the millstone grit river cliff included Amphidium mougeotii; Lejeunea c.f. lamacerina (the first Northumberland record since 1956, if it's right, and the second vcr); Conocephalum conicum (the shiny one with conspicuous pores); C. salebrosum (the dull one); Cephalozia bicuspidata - If you have excellent eyesight (like John - see photo) to the naked eye this tiny liverwort appears as very short sections of fine green thread. If you don't have excellent eyesight (like me), you miss it altogether! So it's often something discovered in the packet once you are back home. We found over 20 species in a small area on these rocks as this is a specialist bryophyte habitat.

Glendue Burn

We crossed back over the river at Glendue Burn - about 15 minutes south of our house - walking back along the disused railway. As the light dimmed, a party of siskins fed noisily on alder cone seeds and we also saw long-tailed tits and goldcrests. And a (wooden) black grouse...

Clare

Carry on Chara-ing!

2007-12-10T08:24:00.000-08:00

I am partial to a pond dip, and have been known to skinny dip, but most dipping recently has been to find charophytes (or stoneworts, a type of green algae). These are super plants, very beautiful under a microscope, excellent bio-indicators for good water quality, and often the first macrophytes to colonise newly created water bodies. The Elder Pliny in the 1st century AD called these plants 'stinking water horsetail', as they resemble the fern-like genus Equisetum (and they can stink!). The smell may be alleopathic, inhibiting pytoplankton growth, but we still don't really know. We do know from genetic studies that charophytes are the missing evolutionary link between water plants and the first land plants.

Chara vulgaris var papillata
photo: Chris Carter
The orange footballs are the male antheridia

I've just had 9 specimens back from Nick Stewart, BSBI Charophyte referee, and got 7/9 right, which is OK but not spectacular. Part of why I like botany is the challenge - it's not supposed to be easy!! Charophytes are particularly tricky due to their plasticity and range of developmental forms. The batch included Chara aspera ... the first record for the NE since ... ever. Which is weird, as it came from Broomlee Lough, on Hadrian's Wall, which has been surveyed intensively in the past as it's a SAC, NNR and SSSI, primarily designated for its aquatic macrophtyes. We are Mapmating all our records for 2007, which will appear on the Flora of the North East website soon. These will include v.c. 67 records for Nitella flexilis agg. and Chara virgata of specimens collected by Chris Irvine. Chris sent me plants found on the Northumbria Natural History Society mid-week botany field meetings. I would really welcome specimens from anyone - fresh in a sealed plastic bag if you post the same day, otherwise press lightly between baking parchment (or the plant sticks to the towel) and a paper towel (address on my website www.ptyxis.com).

Chara aspera beds in Scottish Loch

Chara aspera in a tub, pending my MSc AFLP molecular analysis!

I've finally got my first scientific peer-reviewed paper published this month in the Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society. This is a milestone, as I am still scheming to get into academia without doing a PhD, although I've got a part-time doctorate lined up with funding. I have to admit that the 6 year slog is off-putting. I also have a famously low boredom threshold, so may not stick it out; conversely, I am inquisitive and obsessive, so it would be fun to do some more science. Of course, I've forgotten the traumatic gestation and birth of the MSc thesis...(I did swear I would not set foot in a lab again)!

Clare

Bogs, farming and bryophytes

2007-11-16T09:21:00.000-08:00

We are still surveying, this time on blanket bog in randomly chosen 1km squares scattered across the North Pennines Natural Area, or at least John is surveying, as I am stuck indoors report writing. The view out the office window isn't bad though (see photo above!) The problem with professional botany is that reports take 3 times as long as the survey work; and the bit you really enjoy is the surveying. I was warned about this when I went pro, I think I did loads more botany as an amateur even though I had to cram it in at weekends and on holidays.

My report this time is v interesting though - research on designing a training scheme for young wannabee upland livestock farmers in the Teesdale area. I do quite a lot of educational consultancy, as very few ecologists/agricultural advisers are also qualified FE teachers. We really need livestock farming to be sustained in the North Pennines for environmental reasons as well as more familiar socio-economic arguments; yet the average farmer's age is 58 and getting older all the time, as young people are not taking over their parents' farms anymore.

Sphagnum magellanicum in North Pennines

Our Sphagnum survey is progressing, blessed by sunshine as frozen moss is not easy to identify! The most common NVC type so far has been M19 heather - hare's-tail cotton grass blanket mire. We had this in the Perthshire NVC surveys (see blog archive 3rd June) but in the North Pennines, cloudberry is apparently not as abundant. The runner-up is M18 cross-leaved heath - Sphagnum papillosum mire. It is always striking how many times you can mis-id Sphag pap and Sphag pal if you (like most people!) rely on field characters. Even really experienced surveyors get these wrong sometimes on jizz; you really have to take the trouble to look for the papillose cell walls under x400. We had a similar experience with Sphagnum pulchrum in the Northumberland border mires recently; it wasn't. The field characters and its habitat didn't agree with the microscope or the national referee!

Sphagnum species by bog pool, Bell Crag Flow, v.c. 67, including putative S. pulchrum! What gorgeous autumnal colours!

Photo: Celia Port

John has found a mire community that is not described in the NVC but mentioned in that wonderful book by Ben and Alison Averis et al., An Illustrated Guide to British Upland Vegetation p 187. In Wales, these NVC gurus found small patches of bog with a canopy of Calluna and Erica vaginatum over a M6 ground layer. So now this vegetation has been identified from the North Pennines too.

John has just tested me, presenting me with a stringy moss, as I am writing this. I wasn't sure what it was. That, it turns out, was because it was only part of a moss - one shoot of Rhytididelphus loreus! Friday nights are moss night! Romantic isn't it?!

I am now going back to the Farmers of the Future research, and if you want to know more about this exciting proposed training project, call the Upper Teesdale Agricultural Advisory Service (UTASS) on 01833 640836 or the North Pennines AONB office on 01388 528801.

Clare

Bog blog!

2007-11-09T10:48:00.000-08:00

We are surveying blanket bog in the North Pennines for our Sphagnum research project, which involves serious walking more than anything else. John has been out alone, which is dodgy even with all the kit, and I am paranoid about disappearing in a bog, having had a scare in some fen carr last month (in up to the top of my left thigh, which is quite a long way, as I am just under 5'8''!!). We keep meaning to do a mountain navigation course; I did moutain leader training years ago (when young, fit and dynamic) but never took it further, once I started working in the City as a lawyer. I don't know how I survived for so long indoors!!!

Fen frolics: survey and condition assessment of fen habitat in Durham

2007-10-22T10:05:00.001-07:00

Fringed water-lily at Loch kenny Pond, Co Durham.

Painted Lady on creeping thistle in lesser pond-sedge swamp.

The gap since our last post reflects the lack of in-door desk time we had in September - both John and I were surveying flat out to complete an assessment of fen and reed-bed habitat in the Durham Magnesium Limestone Natural Area. This equates to a fair chunk of county Durham, including the coastal denes, but excluding SSSIs, focusing on tier 2 sites like County Wildlife Sites and other undesignated areas.

We were doing a condition assessment of each site using Natural England's common standards monitoring methodology. Not many people have tried this out in the field in the North-East and we found that you really do need to be an experienced NVC surveyor who can accurately name communities more or less instantly, otherwise you'll be there all day (which kind of defeats the point of the CSM method - supposedly aimed at non-experienced people); plus you really need to know at least a key selection of bryos to do it properly. The next stage is to analyse our data and come up with a classification for Durham fens in the broad sense - which includes both mire (e.g. M10), swamp (S4 onwards - lots of these; boring buggers!), tall herb fen (e.g. S27) and wet grassland (e.g. MG4, MG 10) NVC communities.

We managed to cover a whopping 107 sites in total, in 4 weeks, out of 135 possibles, which is quite good going, especially with Foot & Mouth lurking in the background - a few farmers did refuse access, although most, even those with cattle, were pretty unconcerned.

The shock headline news appears to be that many sites have declined since their last visit (1991 for most) and almost all are in unfavourable condition, often turning into a species-poor M27 or much worse, OV26, featuring greater willowherb Epilobium hirsutum. I am now sick of Epi hirs!

Species-poor M27 - mostly dead! Part of the challenge for this survey, in September, was the dead and vegetative plant identification!

Even the few SSSIs we looked at (as they were next door to a CWS) are pretty knackered (see post below about Hetton Bogs). Bit of a doom and gloom situation. The sites that are hanging on in there are invariably on private farm land where the farmer is interested and is doing the right level of management.

The worst sites, by far, were ...

in local authority ownership. Probably no surprises there, unfortunately. We need to do a massive education effort to get the right people in local authorities doing the right thing; it's tragic that on sites where we do have the power to do some management, nothing, or not enough, is being done!!

The other shock was the apparent decline of a few widespread plant species characteristic of fen, like marsh cinquefoil Potentilla palustris. This is quite a common plant ... or was. It's not regarded as threatened nationally and plenty of SSSIs have good populations, but it does seem to be disappearing from lowland Durham sites. Like ragged-Robin Lychnis flos-cuculi (love that name!), it's one of those iconic fen species.

Ragged-Robin, on a lovely bit of cattle pasture (M23) marsh, Beacon Hill, nr South Wingate, Co. Durham

Ragged-Robin is much more iconic than the rarities like milk parsley Peucedanum palustre. I think conservationists need to focus on plants that people at least have a fair chance of seeing locally! I remember finding ragged-Robin in lots of roadside ditches as a child in Cambridgeshire. Twenty-five years on, eutrophication has wiped out most of those populations around where I used to live. Plantlife's new fens officer, Tim Pankhurst, is the person to champion these species. Tim is a top fen specialist and it's great that he is able to focus effort on fen habitat nationwide - it's not all in East Anglia guys!! You can read about Plantlife's work at http://www.plantlife.org.uk/

Clare

Hetton Bog horror

2007-08-14T10:21:00.000-07:00

I had a horrific shock recently botanising for the Durham Biodiversity Partnership's fen inventory project. We are locating and surveying as many fen and mire sites in the Durham magnesium limestone natural area as we can by the end of September, focussing on 2nd tier sites rather than SSSIs. Our survey team visited Hetton Bog SSSI to practice the fen condition assessment and site survey methodology. This site is designated for its valley mire herb-rich fen communities. Or so we thought...the site now bears very little resemblance to the SSSI description. Much of it is now MG1 false oat-grass Arrhenatherum elatius grassland. There was no sign of any of the choice species like brown sedge Carex disticha and marsh valerian Valeriana dioica. Sadly, I suspect these are long gone. The small patch of surviving fen meadow is a species-poor M27 Filipendula ulmaria - Angelica sylvestris mire. Hetton Bog was "one of only two sites known to contain such wetland communities in the Tyne-Tees area" so we are down to one site (hopefully).

The official condition assessment is that Hetton Bog is in unfavourable condition but recovering. It looked like it was drying out even further to me. Grazing, or at least multiple cuts, would be needed to reduce the cover of the false oat-grass, but obviously the hydrology must also be knackered and I don't really know what you can do about that.

I expect a non-botanist would think this is a lovely site; it is still very valuable for conservation, particularly for invertebrates. But someone who knows their vegetation would be able to tell instantly that it is not what it once was. This is a bit of a sad post; and I am sure there are lots of issues which would explain the situation at Hetton Bog. But that doesn't stop me feeling very upset when I see a site that has deteriorated so much, especially as botancially-rich wetland sites are so threatened nationally.

Clare

Tetraplodon mnioides

2007-08-13T00:33:00.000-07:00

I was just about to finish botanising at Bellcrag Flow yesterday when I came accross Tetraplodon mnioides growing among mosses in the drain at the side of a forestry track. Even to people who never notice mosses this is a very striking species. Unfortunately none of my photos of it were in focus.

Nationally it is quite uncommon, although more frequent in bogs and heaths in the north and west. It has a very interesting life cycle. It grows on the bones of dead animals or sometimes on dung. The spores are dispersed by flies. The spore capsules give off a scent of rotting animal which is attractive to flies. They pick up the spores and deposit them on the next rotting animal they visit.

John

NEW county record for Durham v.c. 66

2007-08-06T14:28:00.000-07:00

I can remember desperately wanting to get my first new VC record when I got into field botany. It was pretty hard to achieve this as at the time I was living in Surrey, one of the most thoroughly botanised counties in England. The chances of a new VCR were limited and only ever likely to be a non-native species. Eventually after obsessively recording in every tetrad in the BSBI's Local Change project in Surrey, I found that holy grail, a new VCR in Verbascum speciosum, Hungarian mullien. John and I have found a few new county records for Durham and Northumberland since moving up here in March 2006, and this year spotted an odd looking spurge while doing a recce for a training day at Hamsterley Forest. Eric Clement, one of Britain's top experts on non-native plants, kindly confirmed it as Euphorbia dulcis, sweet spurge, which I think is new to Durham v.c. 66.

My best botany moments have been when routine recording has turned up some really unusual species; going to a site specifically to re-find something (no matter how rare or endangered) is a very poor second best. I try to encourage people who do the latter to have a go at recording because I think that it is really so much more exciting to find new, unexpected things for yourself!

What do you think? What's your best botany moment??

Clare

Species-rich banks in meadows

2007-08-04T11:51:00.000-07:00

The meadow survey season is now well and truly over for this year and we have started our green hay harvesting at last. The weather has been dreadful and has held us up much longer than we hoped. Since I started the hay meadow job last year I have surveyed nearly 400 meadows in the North Pennines AONB, so I am starting to build up a reasonable picture of what's out there. Overall there are very very few really herb-rich upland hay meadows left - considerably less than official estimates. Many of the really good sites identified in the NCC surveys of the mid 1980s have been agriculturally improved. I've been a bit shocked by this. The losses of species-rich grassland between the 1950s and 1980s are well documented, but it seems like the small number of sites surviving in the 1980s have suffered major losses in the last 20 years despite conservation initiatives like SSSIs and the ESA scheme.

Where meadows include awkward or steep banks that are too difficult to access with large modern machinery, these often have interesting vegetation. A few (bad) pictures below show a small sample of the variation you can get. The main upland hay meadow community on dry soils is MG3 and there are some very good examples of herb-rich MG3 on some of these banks. But the really interesting thing about them is that you can sometimes get several different types of vegetation on the same bank. Many of these banks would have been mown for hay using hand tools in the distant past, but nowadays the only management they get is grazing in spring and autumn. They may never have had any fertiliser (including farm yard manure) or lime applied.

My favourite type of bank vegetation has to be U4c. This is strange vegetation that I don't understand yet. It usually includes several calcifuge species but yet is often very species-rich. Species-rich acid grassland is not something I have come accross before. There is usually a good bit of tormentil and heath bedstraw along with sweet vernal-grass, red fescue and common bent. Sometimes you get mat-grass, heath rush and other species that I think of as strong calcifuges. Sometimes its not much richer than this so it conforms quite closely to normal species-poor U4. But there is a group of species that indicate vegetation that is often much richer. These are betony, zig-zag clover, devil's-bit scabious, heath grass and bitter vetch. These areas are usually very herb-rich and are good places to look for uncommon hay meadow plants like greater butterfly-orchid, alpine bistort, fragrant orchid (usually subsp. borealis) shade horsetail or small white orchid.

A moderately interesting U4c bank near Wolsingham

Some MG3 vegetation on a bank in the Harwood Valley

An unmown herby bank just outside Middleton-in-Teesdale

A forest of wood horsetail

Orchid overdose!

2007-07-01T12:24:00.000-07:00

I've never really been in to orchids. They get a lot of attention, they are too showy, Dactylorhizas are bloody difficult and I've never learnt them properly. A lot of botanists particularly like orchids and go out of their way to see lots of them, making special trips to famous orchid sites. I've never really been interested in that but suddenly I find myself orchid twitching! Some uncommon species occasionally turn up on banks in upland hay meadows so this year I've made a concerted effort to try to get to grips with them and I find myself really getting in to them.

This weekend I've been to 2 sites that were spectacular for their flora and their orchid populations in particular. Gowk Bank NNR must be one of the most remote nature reserves in England. You have to be quite determined to get there. I took a wrong turn at one stage and ended up at an RAF base that isn't marked on the map. Very confusing (and a bit intimidating)! It has a mosaic of vegetation communities including some excellent herb-rich upland hay meadow communities. A lot of the vegetation there is much more acidic in character than most upland hay meadows I come across but still very very herb rich. I went there to have a look for Euphrasia rostkoviana for the warden. It was there in abundance which was nice to see. I got directions to find Pseudorchis albida and frog orchid. I found one spike of the Pseudorchis (see picture) but I couldn't find any frog orchids.

There were extensive areas of grassland that looked intermediate between U4c and M26 with some of the usual upland hay meadow plants but abundant Crepis paludosa and acidic species like Potentilla erecta, Galium saxatile, Juncus squarrosa and Nardus stricta. The whole site had loads of twayblade, Gymnadenia conopsea subsp. borealis (see picture) and the 3 common upland haymeadow Dactylorhiza species - fuchsii, maculata and purpurella - probably their hybrids as well (groan!).

Today Clare and I went to see a very species-rich pasture close to Allendale. The dry bits looked like U4c again which is similar to MG5c but a bit more acidic. I'm not used to seeing such species-rich acid grassland. There must be something strange about the soil and/or management of these communities that makes them so uncommon. In the original NVC books they were only recorded in Derbyshire but they are a lot more widespread than that although probably very uncommon everywhere they occur.

This site was also very spectacular for its orchids. Surprisingly the only Dacylorhiza was fuchsii. Otherwise it had loads of twayblade, Gymnadenia conopsea subsp.borealis and greater butterfly orchid. This is a very rare plant in Northumberland - there are only a handful of sites for it in the county, mostly with a small number of plants in each one. One this site there were easily more than 1,000 plants in the field.

Anyway, enough about orchids, you may never hear me talk about them again!

John

... and more meadows ...

2007-06-24T14:15:00.000-07:00

Highlights from last week's meadow surveys. Surveyed 10 meadows on a farm in Westgate, Weardale and Alchemilla acutiloba was abundant in 8 of them! The leaf lobes didn't look as distinctive as I expected so I actually recorded it as Alchemilla xanthochlora in the first field and only realised what it was half way through the second field.

Recorded Euphrasia rostkoviana in 2 fields near Wynch Bridge in Teesdale where Margaret Bradshaw's Upper Teesdale Botany Group also found it a couple of weeks ago. In one of the fields it was quite abundant throughout the field.

The absolute highlight of the week was visiting a meadow near Garrigil in South Tynedale with a very large and varied and very species-rich bank in the middle. I didn't have my camera with me so no photos I'm afraid. Linda Robinson discovered the site last year and introduced us to it. We saw 2 spikes of small white orchid which is a very nice plant (for an orchid), also a few Gymnadenia conopsea ssp. borealis. The bank also has Crepis mollis which wasn't flowering and we couldn't find it. We also could not find Alchemilla glomerulans where it was growing last year at the edge of the meadow. Most bizarrely of all was the Vulpia bromoides growing along the top of the bank, probably many miles away from its next nearest site.

Here are some pictures,

A typical MG3 community growing on a strem bank within a SSSI meadow in Allendale

Meadow foxtail flowering

John

Cow-wheat and whin grassland

2007-06-17T12:05:00.000-07:00

Bad week for meadow surveys this week because of the weather and the forecast is bad for next week too. Rain has been torential here at times this week. We went for a walk on the other side of the Tyne during the week and came across a spectacular display of common cow-wheat. Took some photos of it in dull weather on Saturday.

Today I went searching for some of the county's rare plants to help with a new 'county rare plant register' for Northumberland. I didn't find anything that I was looking for but came across some extensive areas of whin grassland near Hadrian's Wall at Walltown. Whin grassland grows on thin soils on outcrops of whin. It is found only in Northumberland. The grasslands I saw today were becoming parched and were dominated mainly by slender parsley-piert and early hair-grass. This is a good habitat for winter ephemerals so its best to see them early in the year and very occasionally it has some real rarities like maiden pink and chives.

John

More meadows

2007-06-10T12:58:00.000-07:00

Another week of hay meadow surveys - covered about 40 this week. Not as exciting as last week but I did find a new site for Equisetum pratense in Teesdale.

The vast majority of the interesting habitat in these meadows is in uncut sections of the meadows on steep banks or in very wet areas. These areas also presumably escape from the fertiliser spreading.

The main cut section of the fields on the same farm as the Equisetum pratense bank were a sea of soft brome. The fields were species-poor and had about 95% cover of soft brome, yet these fields have been recieving £250/ha (from the taxpayer) under the Pennine Dales ESA (agri-environment) scheme for several years for maintaining them as they are.

an expensive sea of brome!

The project I work on is about restoring upland hay meadows and I survey lots of meadows in order to select which have most potential for restoration or as seed sources. Then I coordinate harvesting seed in 'green hay' from the species-rich fields and transferring this hay to nearby fields that have been prepared and are ready for restoration. We do this in 2 stages. In the first stage we introduce yellow rattle and red clover in order to encourage a change in the soil conditions to make it more suitable for other species to get established. The second stage is to introduce a very species-rich mixture after yellow rattle and red clover are already well established.

Last week I visited several of the fields we worked on last year. The results after 1 year were variable. On the most sucessful field the yellow rattle was abundant but occured in very obvious strips showing where the spreading machine had been. This looked a bit odd but I guess it will soon spread out from the strips.

On monday I revisited one of the best fields I found last year near Wolsingham in Weardale. This was very herb rich throughout the field and had abundant great burnet. Floristically it matches MG4 almost exactly but the habitat is very different to the typical MG4 alluvial flood meadows. So it is probably MG3 but with a few species missing!

John

NEW county record for South Northumberland v.c.67!

2007-06-08T10:08:00.000-07:00

John is not one to shout about things, but I think his find of Alchemilla subcrenata new to Northumberland deserves its own blog spot!

Until last week, Alchemilla subcrenata (it doesn't have a common name) was only known in the British Isles from a few sites in Teesdale and Weardale. For a distribution map, see the new flora of the North-East website http://botanicalkeys.co.uk/northumbria/index.asp which is the most uptodate resource for plant records in our area, having had John's record added already!

Finding a native plant new to a vice county is one of those botanical meccas; something we all secretly want to do once in our life! It's not easy as most new county records are for non-natives (or aliens). And to find a species of considerable conservation significance like Alchemilla subcrenata (listed as 'endangered' in the new Red List) is doubly exciting.

Who says that the British flora is all done and dusted?! There are still things to discover and the conservation sector pretty much relies totally on amateur botanists to get out there and record a county's plants.

Alchemillas (or Lady's-mantles) are a group of plants that reproduce asexually and as a result there are subtle differences between the recognised species. Alchemillas can be tricky to identify, so John got this plant confirmed by the BSBI Alchemilla referee, Margaret Bradshaw. Margaret is thrilled with this find, but not surprised, as there was no particular reason why this Durham species should not occur over the county boundary - it was just a matter of someone knowing what to look out for. But we've had to wait 56 years for it to be discovered in Northumberland, as Margaret first found this species, new to Britain, in Teesdale back in 1951!

I hope this find inspires you all to get out and botanise this summer, as you never know what you could turn up!

Clare

meadows and moorland

2007-06-03T14:46:00.000-07:00

Some pictures from this week's meadow surveys below. The survey season is in full swing now. Highlights from this week include:
finding Alchemilla subcrenata new to Northumberland, and a very nice patch of herby M26 mire in a field on the same farm; finding a new site for Euphrasia rostkoviana subsp. montana; and surveying the meadows at Widdybank Farm. The meadows there are well know for their rarities including several arctic alpines. I managed to spot several of these but seeing these plants is still not as exciting as finding a special plant in an unexpected (and unknown) place.

Primula farinosa by a stream through a meadow in Upper Teesdale

Geum rivale in a damp meadow at Widdybank Farm, Upper Teesdale

Teeswater sheep on a farm in Lunedale

A stand of Trollius europaeus in a meadow in Upper Teesdale

Briza media flower just coming out, on a species-rich bank near Alston, South Tynedale.

I just spent the weekend in Perthshire helping Clare with a moorland NVC survey. Lots of cloudberry flowering in M19 and H22 vegetation. Apparently H22 is a good place to search for Cornus suecica. Maybe Clare will find it next week! It was about an hour and a half walk in to the site she was surveying and we did spot some Trientalis europaea alongside the track on the way in. Neither of us had seen this plant before. It looks like it would be very easy to miss among the Vaccinium if it was not in flower.
Trientalis europaea under bilberry in Perthshire

John

rare hay meadow plants

2007-05-30T14:10:00.000-07:00

My day-job is working on an upland hay meadow restoration project for the North Pennines AONB. This involves surveying lots of hay meadows between the last week of May and the first week of July. Last year in 133 meadows I didn't find any real rarities, but this year I've already found two in the first week!
I have not attempted to identify Euphrasias up to now but decided to give it a go this year as there are some species that are very good indicators of unimproved meadows. The first Euphrasia I found this year turned out to be E. rostkoviana subsp. montana. Check this link for a distribution map http://www.bsbiatlas.org.uk/map_page.php?spid=797&sppname=Euphrasia%20rostkoviana%20subsp.%20montana&commname=Eyebright. I found this in a meadow near Slaggyford in South Tynedale.
Yesterday while surveying in Allendale I found an Alchemilla with hairs on the upper surface of the leaves, which didn't look right for A. filicaulis. The sinus was almost closed and the bottom lobes pointed upwards - characters typical of A. subcrenata. On closer inspection some of the hairs in the stem and petioles were deflexed and Margaret Bradshaw (the BSBI Alchemilla referee) confirmed that she thought it was A. subcrenata. It had not been found outside of Teesdale and Weardale before so this is a new record for Northumberland. Margaret was the first person to find this species in Britain in 1951 and she is still going strong!

John

Moss man!

2007-05-05T12:33:00.000-07:00

When I first met John he was starting to spend most evenings looking at bits of green fluff-like plants, better known as mosses and liverworts. When I mentioned this to Sue Rumsey (wife of Fred, the well-known moss man) she said (in a Mancunian accent) "you'd better nip that in the bud!" as apparently Fred gives her no peace, examining everything moss-like everywhere, even in Tesco's car park, which can get embarrassing!

So along with Sue, I am now officially a moss widow; although I tend to get competitive so have got going with bryos too. John is now British Bryological Society country recorder, which means that amongst other things like recording, we will be organising some field meetings for beginners. Get in touch via our website for more details!

Clare

EYE Project: see the world through different eyes!

2007-04-05T04:38:00.000-07:00

Can you remember your first wild moment? Perhaps it was catching sticklebacks in a stream or standing on the shoulder of a Cumbrian mountain. After that nothing looked the same. Something made you value the natural world.

This exciting Heritage Lottery-funded 3 year project aims to open up the world of wildlife to volunteers and promote wildlife recording in north-east England. It is a collaboration between the Great North Museum project and the Northumbria Natural History Society, drawing together amateur expertise with young people and volunteers throughout the Newcastle area. I am providing training workshops for the project in 2007.

The training is free and courses on offer this summer include small mammals, wild flower identification and a workshop on how to plan and run a guided wildlife walk for your local community - for dates and details call the project officer, Naomi Hewitt 0191 222 7868

Extreme quadratting!

2007-04-03T12:54:00.000-07:00

Ouch! I didn't mean to do it. I don't know why I did it. And now I'm paying for it! I went back to survey the mosses on the palace leas http://www.staff.ncl.ac.uk/r.s.shiel/Palace_Leas/index.html plots and ended up doing 100 quadrats in 1 day. Granted, I was only recording bryophytes and most quadrats had either 1 or 2 species (or sometimes none), so they weren't that demanding. I wanted to do 140 quadrats and had put aside 3 days to do them. By lunchtime I had done about 40 and then by 5 o clock I had done another 40 or so when I remembered that I had to do a talk for farmers about the Hay Time project in Allendale that evening at 7.30. So I thought I might as well do some more for an hour or so to pass the time (even though it was getting quite hard to see after 6).
The plots have not been grazed since winter so I had to keep parting the grass with my hands to search for mosses underneath. So now, I've got repetitive strain injury. My hands were killing me when I got home! This is actually my second moss injury, but that's another story, So then of course I spent the next 4 days painting our new house which didn't really do my hands any favours.
Anyway the survey was worthwhile. The more detailed look confirmed what I found on the first visit except that by doing quadrats I did find several other species that I had not spotted the first time. There are very striking patterns of moss distribution on the different plots subject to differing fertiliser treatment and I've no idea really what lies behind this pattern! It will be very interesting to analyse the data against the other data that have been collected from the plots over the years.
There is also a clear difference between the bryophyte flora on the ridges and on the furrows. There are fewer mosses on the furrows. You might think that the furrows would be damper and this would encourage bryophytes, but maybe there is too much competition from the grasses which are significantly more vigorous in the furrows than on the ridges at this time of year.
I also thought that the 2 most acid plots might have similar bryophyte floras as they are significantly more acid than all of the others. In fact their bryophyte floras were completely different, so I guess the direct influence of the fertiliser must be more significant than the pH. Robert Sheil http://www.staff.ncl.ac.uk/r.s.shiel/ is now going to analyse the data and hopefully we will be able to get a journal article or 2 out of it. Its amazing how few papers there are on the ecology of bryophytes. The species I found on these plots are all extremely common plants and we know hardly anything about their ecology! Of course the vast majority of ecologists would not recognise them, so that's part of the reason.
John

Trainee bryophyte surveyors needed!

2007-03-12T10:50:00.000-07:00

John and I have just spent the weekend at the British Bryological Society's (BBS) Bryophyte Ecology group training event for the new bryophyte ecology survey.

This ambitious national survey aims to collect valuable ecological data about widespread moss and liverwort species - information which, amazingly, we just do not have even about very common species!

The best way to get started with bryology is to learn the widespread, big pleurocarp species first. So because this survey focuses on the most common species, it is ideal for beginners, although there is something for everyone, as data for rare or critical species is also needed. The survey method involves collecting 0.5 x 0.25 m quadrat data representative of the various habitats found in a sample of 10 km grid squares across Britain and Ireland. Many quadrats will only have a handful of species present, plus you take 10 replicate quadrats, so you see the same species again and again - a sure fire way to learn them! It really helps with your NVC knowledge too if you also assess the wider vegetation community as the same time.

John and I will be doing the survey this year in South Northumberland on our home patch - so any keen bryophyte surveyors out there - please get in touch via http://www.ptyxis.com/ as we'd love you to join us!

Clare

Botany in Flatts Wood, Co Durham

2007-02-17T11:29:00.000-08:00

Our first proper days botanising for a long while. We have been too busy renovating the new house lately - so we took a day off from that and had a great time! Some patches of winter aconite and snowdrops in flower at the top of the wood. Funny, I can't ever remember seeing winter aconite before. Found some yellow star-of-Bethlehem leaves just coming through in the area where we found it last year. None of it flowering yet. No sign of the toothwort coming among the hazels along the riverbank yet. Its been a warm winter (really nice mild spring day today) so maybe some more things will be in flower early in a couple of weeks when Clare is doing a 'first day hunt' walk - looking for species in flower on 1 March.
We tried out the new bryophyte ecology survey in the wood. Did 10 quadrats on the woodland floor. Its a well-designed survey method which will really expand our understanding of the ecology of some of our most common and abundant bryophytes. Hopefully it will also encourage more people to get interested in mosses and liverworts as the survey can be done by people without much identification experience. More about this survey later!

John

Mosses on Palace Leas

2007-02-10T03:44:00.000-08:00

Had an interesting day surveying the mosses growing on the Palace Leas long-term hay meadow fertilizer experiment http://www.staff.ncl.ac.uk/r.s.shiel/Palace_Leas/index.html Having seen the very striking differences in the vascular plant flora on the different plots before, I thought it would be interesting to investigate the bryophytes. There are very few published papers on bryophyte ecology even of the common species.

Another reason to investigate this was to see if there was any relationship between hay production and moss cover. In the dales, one of the reasons that farmers give for chain harrowing in spring is to get rid of the mosses. They have a perception that high moss cover prevents the crop from growing well. I suspect myself that moss cover might have no impact on the growth of the vascular plants. By chain harrowing of course they are very efficiently spreading moss propagules evenly around the field! Chain harrowing in spring is very damaging for the ground-nesting birds, so it would be useful to find another reason to discourage people from doing it.

Anyway, what I found was interesting enough to encourage me to go back in March/April to do a proper survey with precise %cover measurements on 10 quadrats per plot.On this visit I just walked over each plot for about 15 mins and recorded the bryophyte species. At the end of each plot I gave each species a DAFOR score and gave a rough extimate of %cover of all bryophytes on the plot. Here's what I found
You can compare these results with the data on the Palace Leas website on the link above and see what you think!

On plot 1 I found only one shoot of both Eurhynchium praelongum and Brachythecium rutabulum - I thought at this stage I had come a long way for nothing! It got more interesting after that. Eurhynchium praelongum was on every plot, but at different levels of cover on different ones. Brachythecium rutabulum was noticeably more frequent on plots 8 & 12 which are also the most species-rich plots for vascular plants. Rhytidiadelphus squarrosus also had a very striking pattern being frequent to abundant on plots 6, 7 & 9 and more or less absent from all of the others. Trying to work out what's behind these patterns will be interesting. These are very common species, but it is amazing how little we know about their ecology.

John

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South Northumberland Rare Plant Register

2007-02-07T10:05:00.000-08:00

We can't conserve plants unless we know what we have got and where it is. Therefore County Rare Plant Registers (CRPRs), produced by the Botanical Society of the British Isles, are a vital resource for conservationists.

We are working with John Richards, BSBI recorder, and members of the Northumbria Natural History Society botany group to get started on producing a CRPR for South Northumberland v.c. 67.

What is a County Rare Plant Register?
Listings of all the vascular plants recorded from a county which are on the National Red list (and other nationally Rare and Scarce plants not covered there), together with the locally rare (three or fewer sites) and other locally important or declining species. Details provided include grid references, and often details of the conservation status and ecology of the site.

Surely we know all of this already?
No we don't as the records behind the most recent Flora of Northumberland often only provide details to a 5km grid square - no where near precise enough to locate a plant and protect it.

How is a CRPR produced?
By volunteers devoting many, many days to finding and recording wild plants. I think some people assume Defra/local authorities/ngo etc employees are out there furiously recording plants and animals as part of their jobs, when the vast majority of records are made by volunteers in naturalist societies. The BSBI alone has generated c. 38 million records! In other words, the whole conservation movement largely depends on the naturalist societies for their basic data.

Can I take part?
Yes, especially if you would like to learn more about plant identification and recording! Contact us via our website at http://www.ptyxis.co.uk/

Introducing Ptyxis Ecology

2007-01-26T06:48:00.000-08:00

John and I are both professional ecologists and botanists but we started out as amateurs who got obsessed about learning to identify plants. Our idea of a good time on a Friday night is keying out a moss!! Now our hobby is also our job.

We set up PTYXIS, an ecological consultancy, because we realised that our experience was valuable - and in demand - as it takes many years and lots of passion to become a competent botanist. We specialise in botanical and habitat survey work in Northumberland, Cumbria, Durham, Yorkshire and the Scottish borders. We will even travel to far flung places like Shetland and the Isles of Scilly if interesting NVC work is on offer!

Want to know what PTYXIS means?!

Visit our website http://www.ptyxis.co.uk/ for more information!